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The Great Tribulation ; or Things Coming on the Earth (two series.) 
The Great Preparation ; or Redemption Draweth Nigh (two series.) 
The Great Consummation ; or The World as it 'will be (two series). 
Teach us to Pray ; or Lectures on the Lord's Prayer (one vol.). 



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THE 



GREAT CONSUMMATION. 

THE MILLENNIAL REST; OR, THE WORLD AS IT WILL BE. 



BY 

THE REV. JOHN GUMMING, D. D., F.R.S.E. 

MINISTER OF THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL CHURCH, 
CROWN COURT, COVENT GARDEN ; 
AUTHOR OF "THE GREAT TRIBULATION," AND "THE GREAT PREPARATION." 



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INTRODUCTION. 



The foundations of duty are laid in the past. Kevelation is the record 
of all we owe to God, to man, and to ourselves. Motive, direction, and 
authority are there. But duty is not always easy : sometimes it is sacri- 
fice. The love that inspires it occasionally falters, and the weary heart 
feels despondent. We are laborers in a dismantled vineyard, voyagers 
on a stormy sea, and travellers on a rugged, crooked, and storm-beaten 
road. Hope reads the prophecies and promises of that future, to the 
grandeur of which all past ages contribute, and in the glory of which 
they shall all be crowned, and imparts unto wavering fiiith and weary 
love those joyous and brilliant prospects which refresh the heart, and 
restoi'e the strength, and give what in itself is victory — the assurance, 
of a near and glorious success. Faith brings stores from the past, and 
Hope brings sunshine from the future, and both pour their contribu- 
tions into the arduous, the troubled, and perplexing present. It was 
because Moses "had respect to the recompense of reward" that he 
was able to " esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the 
treasures of Egypt." Abraham was sustained in life's struggles be- 
cause " he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and 
maker is God." So it is written of that white-robed and glorified com- 
pany : " These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but 
having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced 
them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the 
earth," " seeking a country, a better country, that is a heavenly one." 



vi 



INTRODUCTION. 



Despair is the evening twilight that settles in eternal night. Hope is 
the morning twilight that expands into everlasting day. 

We find the toiling and struggling men of the world fleeing to the 
novel or romance in order that, lifted out of the oppressive present on 
the wings of fancy, they may enjoy a transient respite and refreshment. 
Human nature would die of exhaustion were its back always bowed 
down. It must turn aside occasionally, if only to gather a wayside 
flower, or dream of summer, or draw on the picturesque creations of 
genius for thoughts that lift it above the earth and waft it away to 
brighter and more ethereal realms. Prophecy has all the interest of the 
most brilliant romance, with nothing of its emptiness ; all the charm 
of the highest poetry, all the beauty of the noblest painting, and all the 
reality of truth and fact. It is God's way of lightening the load of care, 
glorifying the present and gladdening the heart. Christianity, the 
religion of faith, and love, and hope, is the religion of happiness. It 
alone presents an axis of rest to the drifting masses of mankind ; it 
imparts a hope " that maketh not ashamed; " it alone brings down 
into the cold heart the warmth of heaven. It is the temptation of man 
to borrow for to-day the troubles of to-morrow, and to carry over to 
to-morrow the duties of to-day, thus setting aside the business that 
belongs to him, and trading on capital that does not. It is the teaching 
of heaven to draw from the morrow its sunshine, not to supplant, but 
to sustain the duties of to-day. That blessed morrow, thank God ! 
comes nearer every day. No Christian would wish to adjourn it were 
it possible. 

Nor are any of its thoughtful inhabitants so perfectly satisfied with 
the world as it is that they do not desire to see that transfiguration of 
heaven and earth, which will have more than the splendor, and nothing 
of the transience of Tabor. 

Our earth is a grand ruin, for which, however, there is reserved a 
glorious restoration ; but that restoration will be accomplished by Him 
that made it, and not by the consummation of any process now going 
on. The Creator will appear as the Eestorer; the great High Priest, 



INTRODUCTION. 



Vll 



"will come forth from the Holy of Holies, as Aaron came out from the 
<f holy place made with hands," and will pronounce that Divine 
benediction which will descend into the depths of the earth, and rise to 
the heights of the heavens, and spread as the waves of an illuminated 
sea, extinguishing the primeval curse, and causing every wilderness it 
touches to rejoice, and the solitary places of the world to blossom as 
the rose. 

Every Christian believes in the advent of a day of rest and res- 
toration. Every one who accepts the Bible as the inspired revelation of 
the mind of God looks for the Millenninm. The only existing differ- 
ence of opinion refers to the nature of it and the means by which it is 
to be introduced. Dean Alford, in his Critical Greek Testament, Vol. 
iv., Part 2, observes that there is a division of opinion " whether the 
expected second advent is to be regarded as preceding or succeeding the 
thousand years' reign or Millennium. The majority, both in number 
and in learning and research, adopt the pre-millennial advent, follow- 
ing, as it seems to me, the plain and undeniable sense of the sacred text 
of the book itself. " " On one point," remarks Dean Alford, " I have 
ventured to speak strongly, because my conviction on it is strong, 
founded on the rules of fair and consistent interpretation; I mean, the 
necessity of accepting literally the first resurrection and the millennial 
reign." " That the Lord will come in person to this earth; that his 
risen elect will reign here with him and judge ; that during that blessed 
reign the power of evil will be bound, and the glorious prophecies of 
peace and truth on earth find their accomplishment — this is my firm 
persuasion, and not mine alone, but that of multitudes of Christ's 
waiting people, as it was that of his primitive apostolic church, before 
controversy blinded the eyes of the fathers to the light of prophecy." 

The Dean also remarks, in his notes on the last chapters of the 
Apocalypse : " This eternal kingdom is situated on the purified and 
renewed earth, become the blessed habitation of God with his glorified 
people. Though not here stated on the surface, it is evident that the 
method of renewal is that described in 2 Pet. iii. 10, namely, a reno 
vation by fire." 



viii 



INTRODUCTION. 



I have illustrated and unfolded those portions of the Old Testament 
prophets which, like -the prophecy on the Mount of Olives, hear on and 
delineate this blessed era, and have endeavored to present to the reader 
a faithful, clear, and most comforting hope of the world as it will be. 

In my first volume, " The Great Tribulation," or Things Coming on 
the Earth " I endeavored to describe what St. John calls y) dlTtpig r\ 
[Aiyulrj « the tribulation the great," through which we must pass, 
and on which the world has already entered. 

In my second volume, "The Great Preparation, or, "Redemption 
Draweth Nigh," I collected the various signs and earnests of the glory 
to be revealed " at that day." 

In this volume, which concludes and completes the series, I have 
labored to set forth that nearing blessedness, that bridal of heaven and 
earth, the consummation of a long betrothal — that sunshine which 
once bathed all Eden — and interrupted, clouded, and refracted for six 
thousand years, will break — the sooner the better — on our earth, and 
perfect a world that will never fade, and cover it with a glory that will 
never die. 

That they who scoff may be brought to a better mind, and they that 
joyfully hold fast the blessed hope may both meet with me in " in that 
" world as it will be,' is my earnest and sincere prayer. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 

The Seven Grand Dispensations .... Isa. lxv. 17. 11 
LECTURE H 

Lights and Shadows Isa. lxv. 18-20. 22 

LECTURE in. 

Eorelights or the Glort Isa. lxv. 18-25. 39 

LECTURE IV. 

The Binding of Satan Rev. xx. 1-5. 60 

LECTURE V. 

The First Resurrection Rev. xx. 4, 5. 78 

LECTURE VI. 

The Holy and Happy Lot Rev. xx. 6. 97 

LECTURE VII. 

Reigning Priests Rev. xx. 6. Ill 

LECTURE Vin. 

Soul and Body Rev. xx. 5, 6. 127 



X CONTENTS. 

LECTURE IX. 

Satan loosed for a Little Rev. xx. 7 — 10 147 

LECTURE X. 

The Great White Throne Rev. xx. 11 — 15 165 

LECTURE XL 

The Glorious Company Rev. vii. 9 — 17 181 

LECTURE XII. 

The Happy Dead Rev. xiv. 13 194 

LECTURE XIII. 

The Harvest op the Earth Jsa. lxiii. 1 — 4 206 

LECTURE XIV. 

The New Heaven, and New Earth . . . . Rev. xxi. 1 224 
LECTURE XV. 

The Apocalyptic City Rev. xxi. 2 242 

LECTURE XVI. 

The Citizens op the New Jerusalem . . . Rev. xxi. 2 260 
LECTURE XVII. 

The Shechinah • . Rev. xxi. 3 280 

LECTURE XVIII. 
The Manifestation of the People of God. Rev. xxi. 3 294 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION; 

OR, 

THE WORLD AS IT WILL BE. 



LECTURE I. 

THE SEVEN GRAND DISPENSATIONS. 

God gives his people notice of each successive stage of 
that grand work ia. which he has been engaged from the 
beginning. 

" For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth ; and the former 
shall not be remembered, nor come into mind." — Isaiah lxv. 17. 

The new heavens and the new earth succeed the great 
conflagration described by Peter, where he says, " the 
heavens and the earth that now are shall be burnt up, and 
all the elements shall melt with fervent heat." It is 
therefore the reconsecration and reconstitution of that vis- 
ible and material economy which is around us now ; so 
truly so that Christians Jook forward justly to this very 
earth as destined to be the loveliest porch of heaven, the 
most beautiful island on the bosom of the infinite main • 
on which shall dwell righteousness, no more in patches, 
but everywhere, and over which shall shine the glory that 



12 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



dwelt between the cherubim, and out of which shall be 
eliminated all the elements of sin, and sorrow, and evil; 
as these were sown broadcast by Satan, and have grown up 
into bitter and disastrous harvests in every age and on 
every acre of the earth. After this conflagration we read 
that there shall be a new heavens and a new earth. 

During the last six thousand years — nearly exhausted 
— of the history of our globe, there have been at least 
six distinct and independent dispensations, to be succeeded 
by a seventh, the glory and the perfection of all that have 
passed away. Just as there seem to have been six days 
spent in the creation of the globe, or rather in the ar- 
rangement of it, crowned by a seventh, its coronal and its 
glory ; so there seem to have been six successive dispen- 
sations or economies, each closing with judgment, and each 
giving birth to another, a brighter and a better. It is 
according to the very same analogy tha^students of proph- 
ecy have argued that the six days consumed in the ar- 
rangement of the world are the types of the six thousand 
years that mete out the time during which this economy 
is to last, and that the seventh day in which the six of 
creation culminated is the type of the thousand years com- 
monly known by the name of the rest that remaineth for 
the people of God, or the millennial age, which ends and 
crowns the world that now is. 

Let us enumerate these six different dispensations, each 
ending in specific judgments. First, there was the Adam- 
itic age, the age of Adam and Eve in Paradise, in which 
God's voice was heard at early morn and at dewy eve, and 
his footprints were visible upon every portion of the gar- 
den of Eden ; all flowers beauty, all sounds music, all air 
perfume, and all sensations bliss : the two hearts that beat 



THE SEVEN GRAND DISPENSATIONS. 



13 



there happy beyond the reach of all disturbing or intru- 
sive element. Adam and Eve sinned, and then the age 
ended in retribution. They were expelled from Paradise, 
and the fiery cherubim guarded the gates of glory, lest 
the unfit criminals and exiles should seek to enter again 
into that holy and happy abode. 

Secondly, we have the antediluvian, patriarchal age, 
marked by the martyrdom of Abel, the crimes of Cain, 
and terminating also in judgment, when God opened the 
fountains of the great deep, withdrew their shutters from 
the windows of heaven, and let forth a depopulating and 
dismantling flood that baptized the earth with its judicial 
waters, and left eight persons only to go down from Ara- 
rat to look forth upon a world dismantled and depopulated, 
and to begin the long and the weary march of life in an 
economy greatly deteriorated. 

Thirdly, we have the Noachian, if I may use the ex- 
pression, dispensation, starting from the ark and the 
mountains of Ararat, under the beautiful symbol and 
shadow of the rainbow, light and darkness; the age too 
strongly branded by unbelief and impiety and idolatry, 
till at last this age also ended in the burning of Sodom 
and Gomorrah, the cities of the plain, and the institution 
of another and a new covenant, which took place as the 
fourth dispensation. This we may call the Abrahamic 
dispensation, when God appeared to the father of the 
faithful, teaching, covenanting, and making bright prom- 
ises ; an age intensely interesting in its story, like life's 
April day, full of sunshine and of showers, of lights and 
of shadows. But it also ended in judgments upon Egypt, 
and the overthrow of Pharaoh in the Red Sea, and the 
exodus of the Israelites toward the promised and the bet- 




14 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



Fifthly, we have the Mosaic economy, beginning at the 
Red Sea, constituted and consecrated again by the ap- 
pearance of Deity ; characterised by the weary march 
through the desert, by the possession of the promised land, 
pledged to them as long as they were faithful to their 
covenant ; ending at last in the overthrow of that beauti- 
ful city Jerusalem, the beauty and the joy of the whole 
earth ; in which God dwelt between the cherubim ; in 
which now the Mosque of Omar raises its crescent to the 
sky, while on the Holy Land the Druse, and the Moslem, 
and the monk leave their desolating footprints ; from its 
shores the people that have a right to it are exiles, until 
God lifts the standard in the sky, and bids Israel come 
forth, and return, and again dwell in Palestine. 

After this dispensation comes the sixth, in which we now 
live ; a dispensation beginning with God manifest in the 
flesh, seen of angels, justified in the Spirit, believed on in 
the world, received up into glory ; a dispensation whose 
characteristic feature is not the conversion of the whole 
world, which will not be accomplished in it. but the elec- 
tion and conversion of a people out of the world, to be 
presented unto him a glorious church, without spot, or 
blemish, or any such thing. Whilst it is our most sacred 
and our most instant duty to carry the Gospel to every 
creature upon earth, and the shorter the time that remains 
the more instant and urgent ought our efforts to be ; yet 
it is evident that the Gospel of the kingdom preached in 
this economy will not issue in the conversion of all the 
inhabitants of the earth. We are expressly told : u This 
Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached among, all nations 
for a ivitness, and then shall the end come ; " and we read 
that when our Lord comes, instead of all being righteous, 




THE SEVEN GRAND DISPENSATIONS. 



15 



there shall be great sin and great wickedness in the world. 
See St. Paul's characteristics of the last times. One of 
the marked and expressive signs of the approach of that 
age is the fulfilment of the second chapter of Joel. That 
chapter is probably now being partially fulfilled. The day 
of Pentecost, that passed away 1800 years ago, was the 
first sprinkling drops of the shower. But God is now 
pouring out his Spirit upon all flesh in greater abundance. 
And as if to show that we occupy the evening hours of 
this last sixth dispensation, let us notice at this moment 
the instancy, and the urgency, and the frequency and the 
force with which the Gospel is being preached ; in theaters, 
in halls, at prayer-meetings held in barns, and in drawing- 
rooms, by men who have great talent, with great rough- 
ness, but real piety, calling men with a voice of thun- 
der to prepare to meet God. and provoking echoes in the 
most obdurate hearts. These things must strike the most 
thoughtless and the most unreflecting, indicating as they 
do the era in the age, the sixth age or dispensation, in 
which it is our lot now to live. The seventh age or dis- 
pensation comes, called the millennial rest. In this mil- 
lennial day all shall be righteous ; every tear shall be 
wiped from every eye ; God alone shall be exalted ; Jeru- 
salem shall be lifted up to the top of the mountains, and 
all nations shall come to it ; Satan shall be bound for a 
thousand years ; the wolf shall lie down with the lamb, 
and the little child shall lead them. But this dispensation, 
so marvellous, like the preceding six is to end in judg- 
ment; for we read that at the close of the millennia] 
economy, after the thousand years have been finished, 
Satan is to be let loose for a little ; and then occurs the 
perplexing statement, beset with great difficulties, to the 



16 THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 

effect that some nations in the four quarters of the globe 
are to come up and compass the camp of the saints of the 
Most High, headed by Satan ; as if it were Satan's last 
desperate muster, on which he stakes his eternal condition 
of ruin or victory ; but we read that he is taken, and cast 
into the lake that burneth with fire, and death and hell 
are cast into it too ; and the millennial age melts into the 
heavenly, as the sweet dawn melts into the noonday sun- 
shine, never to be clouded nor to be interrupted for ever. 
I have thus given the history of the past in these six 
economies, of which we have either experience or history. 
Of the seventh, the experience or the history remains still 
to be realised. 

The mark of this seventh economy, which is introduced 
at the 17th verse of this chapter, to which Peter refers 
in the 3rd chapter of his Second Epistle, is a new heaven 
and new earth, " wherein dwelleth righteousness." What 
a distinguishing feature is this, not wherein dwelleth 
law, which is not always righteousness, but " wherein 
dwelleth righteousness ; " when every heart shall be love, 
every intellect shall be light, every conscience shall be 
peace, and all blessings break upon the shores of hearts 
that have been crushed, like summer waves upon the sands 
from a peaceful sea, chiming in songs of gratitude un- 
broken and undisturbed for ever and ever ! In that bless- 
ed state wherein dwelleth righteousness there shall be no 
more misunderstanding and misinterpretation of each 
other. The worst wars that have convulsed the earth, and 
scourged the nations, have arisen from misunderstanding. 
There shall be there no uncharitableness to desire to mis- 
interpret ; there will be no shadow of ill-will upon a sin- 
gle brow : there shall be no ripple of ill-feeling rushing 



THE SEVEN GRAND DISPENSATIONS. 



17 



through the channels of a single heart ; they shall all be 
righteous, saith the Lord. There shall be no ignorance in 
that day to lead to misapprehensions. We now see through 
a glass darkly. I believe if two people that heartily hate 
each other — and such phenomena do occur — were to see 
each other as they are, they would shake hands and em- 
brace each other, and marvel at the misunderstanding that 
had led to their discords, their divisions, and disputes. 
It is by seeing bits of each other that we misinterpret each 
other ; and it is by putting hasty constructions upon each 
other's words, and deeds, and features, and manner, that 
we come often to uncharitable and unrighteous inferences 
respecting each other. In that blessed state there shall 
be no crime to stain the calendars of the world or to vex 
the souls of the people of God. Each heart shall be the 
holy chancel in which God dwells ; each spirit shall be the 
seat of the very shechinah, and be consecrated as the holy 
of holies itself. Whatever taint sin has left, whatever 
trail it has spread upon the earth, whatever seeds of evil 
it has sown, whatever bitter fruits it has given birth to, 
shall all be swept away from that divine economy in which 
dwelleth righteousness. In it there shall be no more tears, 
nor sorrow, nor crying ; all former things shall have passed 
away. Every word shall be true, every feeling shall be 
just, every affection love, every act shall be righteous, as 
measured by the standard of heaven ; every thought shall 
be pure, as weighed in the sanctuary of the Eternal ; 
righteousness shall dwell in every heart, its illumination ; 
in every affection, its warmth ; in every imagination, its 
inspiration ; in every word, its music ; in every deed, its 
coloring, its fragrance, and its glory ; the whole soul, body, 
and spirit shall be inlaid with the exquisite and imperish- 



IS 



TEE GREAT COXStMMATION. 



able mosaic of righteousness, and love, and peace, and joy ; 
and no tides of change or streams of trouble shall pass 
one ripple or cast one shadow over that brilliant and beau- 
tiful economy in which dwelleth righteousness. And mark 
the force of the expression, " dwelleth righteousness." 
Here it has been an incidental and a transient visitant, 
like angel visits, few and far between; but then right- 
eousness shall no longer be a visitor to our world, whom 
we entertain as a stranger unawares, but a permanent in- 
habitant ; for it is said, 4i In which dwelleth righteous- 
ness." The earth will be purified ; righteousness will rest 
upon it like a glory cloud, and be reflected from its every 
rock, and stream, and tower, and fruit, and flower, like 
sweet and cloudless sunshine. Righteousness shall dwell 
in it. Such is the promise of God by Isaiah. 

We have reason to believe that this righteousness will 
dwell in a material orb, with material glories, among men 
living in the flesh, raised from the dead : or of the living 
changed, recognising each other, and holding communion 
and fellowship with each other ; and only out of this 
earth shall be ejected what Satan succeeded in introducing, 
but nothing that God made shall be destroyed ; it shall be 
purified, consecrated, and hallowed. Sin, the blot that 
has defaced it, the interpolation that has disturbed it. shall 
pass away for ever and ever. Sin crept into heaven with 
the angels ; it penetrated into Paradise with Satan ; it 
is in this economy in the air, in the earth, in the ocean ; 
a guest at our tables, a companion in our journeys, a ten- 
ant in our hearts, a blot upon our memories, an intruder 
and a disturber in our consciences. Sin at this moment 
is a shadow in the sanctuary, an interruption in our holi- 
est prayers, a discord in our sweetest songs, a worm in the 



THE SEVEN GRAND DISPENSATIONS. 



19 



fairest and the most fragrant flower ; it creeps into our 
charity, and turns it into vain-glory ; it penetrates our 
worship, and makes it hypocrisy ; it touches our faith, and 
it becomes presumption ; it mingles with our repentance, 
and makes it despair ; it vitiates our noblest deeds, like 
the fly, the dead fly, in the apothecary's ointment, and 
makes them sinful and polluted in the sight of a holy 
God. In this dispensation sin enters the eye of one, as in 
the case of David ; it nestles in the hand of another, as a 
bribe in Gehazi ; it settles on the tongue of a third, as in 
the case of Ananias ; it was the life of the treachery of 
Judas : it was the core of the denial of Peter ; it origi- 
nated the doubts of Thomas ; it is in every disease that 
racks the body : in every pestilence that rides upon the 
air ; in every hurricane that dismantles the earth : in 
every earthquake that convulses it. We have in all these 
the outward blots, and blains, and boils, into which sin 
breaks out everywhere, till poor afflicted nature groans 
and travails in pain, and yearns, and longs, and seeks to 
be delivered. What is wanted is not this earth swept 
away, but purified and cleansed. Let the voice that once 
said in majestic tones, " Let there be light," and there was 
light, only pronounce the words, Let there be a new heav- 
en and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness ; and 
this earth of ours will have its tears dried up, its groans 
stilled, its yearnings gratified ; and those bleak wilder- 
nesses shall rejoice, and those desert places shall blossom 
like the rose ; and our world, the fairest and loveliest orb 
in the universe, will in consequence of its marvellous 
story awaken the deepest interest, and concentrate on it- 
self the intensest regards of all the orbs in the universe 
of God. No orb is there in the starry hosts of the sky 



20 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



on which a cross has been raised ; no city in Jupiter, or 
Saturn, or Mars, or Venus, or any of the planets belong- 
ing to our system, in which there is a grave in which God 
manifest in the flesh once lay ; in no other orb has there 
been a Pentecost. The antecedents of our globe are the 
most brilliant : the historic traditions of our world are the 
most thrilling ; and it seems to me as if it would be an 
awful catastrophe if a world with such antecedents, such a 
history, covered with so magnificent footprints, should 
ever be expunged or annihilated, or disappear from the 
orbs and records of the universe. But we know it will 
not. Its sin will be eliminated, and it will be reconse- 
crated by the footstep oP its present Lord; it will be beau- 
tiful again, and so beautiful that the former heavens and 
earth shall not come into remembrance ; the joy of its in- 
habitants shall make them forget their former sorrow. 
The sailor forgets the storm after he enjoys the peaceful- 
ness of the desired haven • the soldier forgets the roar, and 
the scenes^ and the awful tragedies of war, after he has 
settled down in his native and peaceful hamlet ; the trav- 
eller forgets the flints, and thorns, and winds, and rains of 
the long, rough, weary road, when he has reached his 
happy home ; and the mother forgets her sorrow for joy 
that a man child is born into the world ; and we shall for- 
get the griefs of the present in the intense, untiring, un- 
interrupted enjoyment of that magnificent future in which 
the present shall be crowned and culminate. 

This new heaven and new earth are meant for a people 
that have new hearts, and to whom all things are made 
new. The future rest, with all its blessedness, is a pre- 
pared place for a prepared people ; " which things,'' it is 
said, " he has laid up for them that love him." Do we 



THE SEVEN GRAND DISPENSATIONS. 



love the Saviour? or are our hearts so numbed by the 
cold of this present miserable age that they are never 
thawed and warmed by the love of Christ, and the hopes 
of the brighter and the better rest that is to come ? Can 
we say from the very heart, " Whom having not seen we 
love ; in whom, though now we see him not, yet believing we 
rejoice with joy unutterable and full of glory ? " Can we 
say from the very heart, " Lord Jesus, thou knowest all 
things, and thou knowest this one thing : however insig- 
nificant I am, however poor in this world's estimation, thou 
knowest that I love thee?" Can you say even now, 
1 : Whom have I in heaven but thee ? " You have relatives 
there ; some of you have a father there, some of you a 
mother, some of you a sister, some a brother, some a hus- 
band, some a wife ; but though you love them, and desire 
to meet them again, and you will meet them again, can 
you cease to see them in the greater splendor of Him who 
is the glory and the burden of their songs ? and can you 
say, " Whom have I in heaven but thee ? 13 And can you 
add, too, in this world — looking at your wealth, your 
profits, your pleasures, estimating your home, guaging the 
happiness and appreciating the joys that nestle like swal- 
lows under its roof- tree — can you say, "And there is 
none upon earth that I desire beside or above thee ? " If 
so, you need not fear ; you will be a tenant of that new 
heaven and that new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. 
c< Unto them that look for him will he come the second 
time unto salvation." Let us then fill the present with 
the privileges it offers, with the duties God demands, and 
God will crown it with the promises he has made, and with 
the new heaven and the new earth he keeps in reserve for 
all them that love him. 



22 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



LECTURE II. 

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. 

It would be strange if in the prophecies of the Millen- 
nial Rest there were no " things hard to be understood." 
The history of the future in the Apocalypse is of course 
not so plain as that of the past of Genesis. Yet there 
are difficulties in the latter. We may therefore expect 
more in the former. 

" But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create ; for, be- 
hold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I 
will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people ; and the voice of 
weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying. 
There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that 
hath not filled his days : for the child shall die an hundred years 
old ; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed." 
— Isaiah lxv. 18 — 20. 

The first question we must try to answer is this : Does this 
photographic portrait represent something in the age to 
come ? Is it the delineation of the phenomena peculiar 
to it? oris it the portrait of something that will transpire 
before those great changes indicated in other portions of 
the Word of God will arrive ? In other words, does it be- 
long to the period spoken of in Revelation xx. in these 



LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. 



23 



words : " They lived and reigned with Christ a thousand 
years ; " or does it belong to an epoch long antecedent to 
this ? It does seem to be the duty of the minister of 
Christ not to shrink from trying to explain, even if he 
should fail, every portion of the Word of God that comes 
before him in due course. What respect would you have 
for one whose duty it is to labor during the week in order 
to edify his flock on the Sunday, if he constantly repeat- 
ed, what indeed are worth repeating, the precious and vi- 
tal truths of evangelical Christianity, but as often as he 
came to a passage that needed research for illustration, or 
on which good men differ, were to say, I am too busy, or 
I am too idle, to examine and expiscate the meaning of 
this portion of the Word of God, and therefore I will skip 
it, and leave you to make of that passage what in your 
own judgments, ignorance, or mistakes you may ? The 
more difficult a passage is the more dutiful it is to try to 
explain it. There are passages in this book which we can- 
not explain. Being a revelation of the Infinite, an apoc- 
alypse of the incomprehensible God, we must expect to 
meet in it touches of light too brilliant for the intellect to 
endure, too magnificent for imagination in its highest soar- 
ings to reach, and to bring down within the horizon of the 
very highest minds. We must not, therefore, be surprised 
if passages occur on which w r e may throw a little light, 
but on which we cannot throw full light, or rather on which 
we cannot give complete satisfaction. Persons must not 
think it inconsistent if the minister of Christ, where he is 
sure, speaks with the absolute dogmatism of an oracle ; 
but where he is not sure, tells you so ; and where he is 
utterly unable, admits at once the depth of the mysteries 
of heaven, and the feebleness of the human intellect. 



24 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



In trying to cast light upon this passage, we have to 
answer the inquiry, Is it the picture of the millennial rest ? 
Is it a scene that transpires subsequent to the conflagra- 
tion of the earth, and the restoration of all things? I 
believe it unquestionably to be so. For you observe Isaiah 
begins, or rather God speaks by Isaiah, in these words, in 
the 17th verse : " Behold I create new heavens and a new 
earth." You turn to Peter in his Second Epistle, and he 
quotes this as a promise soon to be fulfilled. He says : 
" The heavens and the earth which are now, being stored 
with fire, are reserved against the judgment of ungodly 
men. Nevertheless we, according to his promise , " what 
promise ? There is no other promise of this kind in the 
Bible but the 17th verse of the 65th of Isaiah: "we 
according to his promise look for a new heaven ; " not 
another heaven, but " a new heaven ; " not another earth, 
but " a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." 

It is therefore plain that the picture contained in the 
65th of Isaiah is a picture of an economy subsequent to 
the conflagration of the globe, and the return of the new 
heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteous- 
ness. It is also perfectly parallel with the picture in the 
21st of Revelation: " I saw a new heaven and a new 
earth " — the very same words — " for the first heaven 
and the first earth were passed away, and there was no 
more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new J erusalem, 
coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride 
adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out 
of heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with 
men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his 
people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their 
God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes ; 



LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. 



25 



and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor cry- 
ing, neither shall there be any more pain ; for the former 
things are passed away." But the difficulty meets us on 
the threshold, how is it possible to reconcile the assump- 
tion that the 65th chapter of Isaiah, at the 17th verse, de- 
scribes the regeneration of the heavens and the earth, and 
is parallel with 2 Peter iii., and with Revelation xxi., and 
yet that there should be in this picture, subsequent to this 
restoration of all things, the strange and startling words : 
" For the child shall die an hundred years old ; but the 
sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed?" 
In the Book of Revelation it is distinctly declared, " there 
shall be no more tears, nor crying, nor death." In this 
very chapter, at the 19th verse, we also read: "the voice 
of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of 
crying." But if infants die; if sods are broken for the 
dead ; there must be, if human sympathy and affection 
survive the last change, tears, and crying, and sorrow. 
Here is a difficulty that has perplexed some of the best 
and wisest interpreters of prophecy. I will collate in this 
and the next lecture many of the judgments of the most 
eminent divines, and give perhaps less what is my own 
judgment, and more what are the opinions of some of the 
most gifted writers upon the subject. In the mean time, 
let me mention the different translations, or rather amend- 
ments of translation, which have been proposed upon this 
very difficult verse : " The child shall die an hundred 
years old ; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall 
be accursed." The first is by Procopius, who thus ex- 
plains or paraphrases it : " All those who attain to that 
resurrection ; " for the resurrection of the pious dead, you 
observe, is cotemporaneous or synchronous with the change 

9 



\ 



26 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



of the heavens and of the earth ; u all those who attain 
to that resurrection shall be perfect and vigorous in soul ; 
so that none shall be imperfect, or infantile, or aged. 
The adult that is saved will be always young." 

The Rev. Mr. Govett says : " The distinction must be 
made between those living on the earth, or born into the 
world at that time, and the risen saints who have been 
raised from the dead by Christ." The Septuagint trans- 
lation is probably the most correct. The Septuagint 
Greek was translated from the Hebrew by some seventy 
scholars selected for that purpose 260 years before the 
birth of Christ. They were masters of the Greek and 
Hebrew tongues. Their translation differs occasionally 
from the authorized translation in our Bible. Translated 
literally from the Greek of the seventy it is thus: 
" There shall not be any more carried out from thence to 
burial an infant of days, a youth, nor an old man who has 
not filled his time ; for the man of an hundred years shall 
be a youth ; but the sinner dying at a hundred years old 
shall be accursed." This translation it w T ould be easy to 
piece with the rest of the passage, except for the last 
clause. The opinion of Mr. Govett, a very able commen- 
tator upon Isaiah, is that the declaration that the sinner 
an hundred years old shall be accursed refers not to 
a sinner existing in the millennial day, but to that out- 
burst that takes place at the close of that day, when we 
read in the Apocalypse that the nations at the four quar- 
ters of the earth come up and encompass the saints of the 
Most High, headed by Satan, loosed from his prison, and 
are at last destroyed by the fearful judgments of God, and 
sent to their own place. 

I must say that this last solution seems to me more 



LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. 



27 



accordant with the tone and the analogy of Scripture than 
the other. Bat I must add, what is not without weight 
and probability, that in the judgment of some the millen- 
nial state is to be composed of two distinct classes : first, 
the dead that are raised when Christ comes to inaugurate 
it ; the living that are changed by his word, lifted up into 
the glory cloud, and ministering as angels to the other ; 
but that there shall survive the conflagration thousands of 
men, the mass of whom are believers, but mingled with 
whom will be unbelievers ; and that these last will con- 
tinue to the end ; but that the good and the bad, the con- 
verted and the unconverted, shall live to the age of the 
antediluvian patriarchs ; a hundred years of age being the 
period of infancy ; a thousand years, the length of the 
millennial day, being the full duration of the life of its 
happy inhabitants. Let us honestly look at some of these 
thoughts, and show the grounds on which they are laid. 
First of all, I may state that Hitchcock, the eminent 
American geologist, and no less eminent Christian, holds, 
and has reasoned it out with some force, though not con- 
clusively in my humble judgment, that death was not in- 
troduced into Paradise by sin; but merely the penalty, or 
the sting that is in death. We know as a geological fact 
that death existed in the vast pre-Adamite epochs; of this 
we are sure ; but I have always associated death, in the 
pre-Adamite geological epochs, with the fall of the angels, 
though Scripture is silent, and conjecture is all that I 
have to adduce. Hitchcock maintains that if Adam and 
Eve had never sinned they would have died ; but he says 
that to them, after probably a thousand years, death, in- 
stead of being a struggle, an agony, a conflict between the 
body, reluctant to let its inmate go — and that inmate, 



28 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



reluctant to leave the old and the familiar home — would 
have been in Adam's case, if he had never sinned, a peace- 
ful sleep, a joyous transference ; a gentle, unfelt step 
from the low lands of beautiful Paradise to the higher 
lands of yet more beautiful heaven, into which Paradise 
should culminate and close. This opinion, if, of course, 
it be true, would justify what seems to be indicated here, 
the contingency of death even during the millennial 
period ; for if the millennium be Paradise restored, as I 
believe it will ; and if death in that type occurred in Para- 
dise that was ; there can be no difficulty in assuming that 
death, as a mere transference, a mere passing out of one 
house into another, may take place, not of course among 
risen saints, in the millennial era. But it seems to me 
there are fatal objections to the theory of Hitchcock ; for 
let any honest man, without a theory or a crotchet to sup- 
port, read the Bible, and in ninety-nine instances out of a 
hundred the impression will be that death and sin are in- 
separably associated. I cannot get over such a passage as 
this: "Death reigned from Adam to Moses;" "the 
wages of sin is death; " and the triumph that the apostle 
predicts as the crowning glory of the age that is to come 
is : " Then shall be brought to pass the saying " — it is 
not yet brought to pass — " that is written. death, where 
is thy sting? grave, where is thy victory?" "And 
the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." All 
these passages seem to me to prove that Hitchcock's theory 
is untenable, and that the true opinion is what I have con- 
stantly urged and commented upon — " The wages of sin 
is death." 

The second theory that undertakes to solve the difficulty 
of this passage is that the millennial rest which succeeds 



LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. 



29 



the conflagration of the earth, and is inaugurated upon the 
bosom of a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth 
righteousness, is not a perfect, but a progressive state; 
that the everlasting state is described in Revelation xxi. 
and xxii., upon the same earth, however; and that the 
millennial state will be as much superior to our present 
state as the future glorious state in the 21st chapter of the 
Apocalypse will be to the millennial state ; that it is one 
of the great stages, as thought by the Rev. Edward Bick- 
ersteth, a man of eminent piety, of fine intellect, and of 
thoughtful habits ; he regarded the millennial rest as one 
of the grand stages in man's progression to his perfect and 
his everlasting state. He thinks it will be a stage superior 
to that which is now, vastly superior ; the majority of the 
human race now are unbelievers ; then, if this theory be 
correct, the vast majority will be believers ; the mere hand- 
ful, the exceptional case, will be the " sinner that is ac- 
cursed," and u the infant dying at a hundred years- old." 
And on this hypothesis the picture of the future, like the 
picture of a landscape, contains the millennial state in the 
foreground, the everlasting state beyond it in the back- 
ground ; but the two so interlacing and intermingling, like 
a binary star, that we often think the picture denotes the 
one when really it denotes the two. If this should be the 
correct solution it will be at least a presumptive explana- 
tion of the difficulty which has puzzled and perplexed so 
many — that there will be incidental death or incidental 
curse in that holy, and happy, and blessed state. 

The Rev. Horatio Bonar, a very admirable and excel- 
lent minister of the Free Church, says : t! In the millen- 
nial state there will be only incidental instances of death, 
remnants of sin, as spots on the face of the sun, hid in 



30 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



the excess of splendor." His idea is that the millennial 
state will be glorious sunshine ; but that there will be ex- 
ceptional clouds, specks or spot, two of which are con- 
tained in the text on which I am now commenting ; but 
that these shall be as nothing in comparison of the over- 
whelming splendor in which they are merged and lost. 
But then, again, the difficulty will occur to you, as it has 
occurred to thousands — we can understand the dead in 
Christ being raised, and taken beyond the reach of the 
last fiery baptism that makes our earth a new earth ; we 
can understand the living Christian being changed and 
translated from the touch of the overwhelming and the 
destroying flame, but you naturally say, how can you sup- 
pose that God will spare from that consuming flame even 
those that are unbelievers and his enemies, neither risen 
nor changed ? because the theory before us assumes that 
there will be in the. millennial rest, and that there will 
emerge from the last conflagration, some who are not con- 
verted, who are not believers, but sinners ; however few, 
however far between, yet the fact that there will be some 
suggest the difficulty how they can have escaped the last 
conflagration. The answer adduced by Mr. Bonar, or rath- 
er the illustrations which he gives, are so far decisive. 
The flood, to which the last conflagration is likened, over- 
flowed the earth ; but not only were the righteous spared, 
but the unconverted also, for unregenerate Canaan was in 
the ark. and emerged from it on Ararat, and entered upon 
the new dispensation which began on the brow of Ararat. 

Again, God marched the Israelites through the Red 
Sea ; the great ocean opening up its bosom to be a beau- 
tiful dry promenade for the Israelites ; while the instant 
that the Egyptians went in, its mighty waters collapsed, 



LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. 



31 



and formed for them a watery grave. But through that 
Red Sea it was not all Christians that marched ; they were 
not all converted that stood with Miriam on the other side 
when she struck the strings of her harp, and joined with 
her triumphant song, speaking of him who had gloriously 
triumphed, and cast Pharaoh and all his chariots into the 
Red Sea. Thousands passed through thp sea who were 
anything but children of God. So again we find Lot's 
daughters were preserved in Zoar ; and yet Lot's daugh- 
ters were not Christians, when fire fell upon Sodom and 
Gomorrah. Mr. Bonar argues, if unconverted men were 
by God's own provision spared from the flood, if unconvert- 
ed men were by God's mercy carried through the Red 
Sea, if unconverted women were delivered from the fires 
of Sodom and Gomorrah, is it not at least possible that 
God will, it amounts to a certainty that he can, deliver 
from the last fire along with his own, on whom the fire 
shall exert no fury, those — however few is not the ques- 
tion — whose hearts are not renewed, and who will sin 
amidst the splendor of the millennial day, just as they 
have sinned in the world that now is ? Such is an at- 
tempted solution of the difficulty, so fir that sinners may 
possibly survive ; if the translation I have given, or the 
exposition I have first adduced, be not the real one. 

But you ask, where will the risen saints be ? because 
we find in Thessalonians, and this is not a question about 
which men differ, it is a thing revealed by the spirit of 
God, that Christ shall descend, the dead in Christ shall be 
raised first ; the instant Christ comes, every grave shall 
open, every green sod shall turn aside; every monument 
of bronze, of marble, or of brass, shall rend ; and the 
cold, scattered, mouldering ashes, inspired by a celestial 



32 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



breath, shall re-form themselves again into those very 
bodies and those very likenesses ; nothing being eliminated 
and left in the grave but sin and imperfection. When 
that takes place, where will they be ? The idea that shocks 
a sensitive Christian mind is this : can we suppose that 
those that have been raised from the dead, who are glori- 
ous in holiness, will be mixed up with people, however few, 
who shall be sinners ? They who give the solution I have 
quoted hold that Jerusalem is to be the central capital of 
the whole earth, in which Christ's risen ones shall be ; it 
seems, secondly, to be revealed that they shall be caught 
up in the cloud, and that glory cloud is to be the grand 
dwelling of the saints of God till the earth is meet for them 
to descend and abide upon it, its glory and its ornament for 
ever. But is not there something improbable in the idea 
that the perfect in holiness and in happiness should see, or 
should in any sense be near the fallen, the guilty, and the 
sinful ? It is answered, are not angels perfect ? are they not 
perfectly holy ? Yet there are angels in every congrega- 
tion ; angels whisper in your counting-houses ; angels 
help you in your difficulties ; angels strengthened the 
great Master in his agony ; angels are " ministering ser- 
vants to all who are the heirs of salvation." The spirits 
of those who have gone before us are nearer to us than our 
relatives across the Tweed or beyond the Channel ; tbey 
may sympathize with our joys, they may see our sorrows ; 
and while we know nothing of them, they may know a 
great deal of us. If holy, happy, perfect angels are m 
our churches, on our streets, in shining troops, in beauti- 
ful and splendid processions, traversing the globe, and ex- 
ecuting God's behests among all his saints throughout the 
world ; and if they are not polluted by the contact, nor 



LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. 



33 



their happiness lessened by the ministry, there is nothing 
absurd at least nor unreasonable that the raised in the 
glory cloud, or risen saints with their glorified bodies, 
should be ministers to those that are upon earth. Nay, 
we are positively told that they shall be kings and priests 
with him, and shall sit upon thrones, and judge the tribes 
of Israel. It seems to me therefore, that there is nothing 
that should necessarily shock the feelings on the supposi- 
tion that this is the case. But I am not satisfied. 

Another thought clearly brought before us here is, that 
Jerusalem is to have the pre-eminence over all. Some 
may think I am fanciful ; no doubt some will say so. when 
I tell you that I believe Jerusalem is to be rebuilt, and is 
to be the grand metropolis and glorious chancel of the ca- 
thedral of the earth. If I were alone in that belief I 
should not state it with such dogmatism ; but Dr. Chal- 
mers asserted it, and it happens that nobody found fault 
with it ; the most gifted men who have studied the subject 
have asserted it. It is the opinion of the Rev. Mr. Dal- 
las, the rector of Wonston ; the opinion of Dr. Villiers, 
the late Bishop of Durham ; of Dr. Bickersteth, the pres- 
ent Bishop of Ripon ; of Dr. McNeile, of the Rev. Mr. 
Fremantle, and of some of the noblest spirits of the age. 
Dr. Chalmers writes : " His people will see Christ whom 
they pierced, when his feet shall stand upon the Mount of 
Olives, and Jerusalem will be again the metropolis of the 
whole Christian world." These are the sentiments of a 
man whose name is venerated and loved by all that knew 
him and admired by all who are capable of appreciating 
profound learning, piety, and thought. Another excel- 
lent minister, the Rev. Mr. Fairbairn, who has written 
able critical works upon the prophets, states, as the result 
2 



34 



TEE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



of most extensive criticism and of the widest research : 
"There is no certainty nor definiteness in language if the 
Scriptures do not delineate a state of things to be enjoyed 
on the visible surface of this earth, changed and renovated 
no doubt by men still dwelling in tabernacles of clay. 
Jerusalem shall be a rejoicing for ever ; there a temple 
shall be raised, to which the glory of Lebanon and the 
most precious things of the earth shall be again brought, 
and where as the place of Jehovah's throne it shall be hal- 
lowed by manifestations of the Divine presence more glo- 
rious exceedingly than were ever seen in the first temple; 
and as Jerusalem shall thus be created the throne of Je- 
hovah, the glory of all lands, so shall her people, the 
Jews, restored, and replaced in Jerusalem, be the first in 
dignity and the highest officers in that city and in the 
kingdom of Christ." I have given you two authorities 
who have looked at the subject ; one of them especially, 
with all the lights of modem criticism, and that is the 
conclusion to which they have come. 

It has been objected, however, by others that, if all this 
is to succeed the conflagration of the earth, it is impossible 
to suppose that the earth can undergo such a conflagration, 
and yet not be totally altered in its very structure and 
shape. It is perfectly possible. The earth has certainly 
undergone great conflagrations before. There must have 
been at some time in the history of it a heat so terrific 
that the granite rocks have been melted and fluid as if 
they had been water. But then the question is, does that 
conflagration necessarily destroy? Heat destroys nothing ; 
I do not believe in annihilation ; nothing is destroyed. I 
believe in what is called the infinite divisibility of matter. 
If you divide an inch into two, you can divide the half 



LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. 



35 



inch into two; you can divide each half into two, and 
then divide each half again into two ; and as long as the 
microscope will enable you to see it, it is still divisible, 
and it is infinitely divisible. A word launched upon the 
air goes beyond the range of your hearing, but it is trav- 
ersing infinite space for ever and for ever. The words 
you have spoken like whispers in secret can physically be 
demonstrated to have now their voice, and though inaudible 
to our blunt ears, are still audible. Voices spoken never 
cease ; nay, the tread of your foot upon a spiculum of 
snow makes the whole earth vibrate ; we cannot feel it, 
but it does not soon cease. If you strike a blow, its re- 
verberations and its repetitions go on for ever. What a 
thought, of the whispers we have breathed, the words, the 
idle words we have spoken, if the judgment-day should 
be a vast whispering gallery, in which all these sounds 
should be heard with awfully distinct crashes ! what a ter- 
rible scene would be the solemnity of a, judgment morn ! 
and what a precious thought that the blood of Jesus Christ 
can take away the guilt of them, if God even should per- 
mit the continuance, or the reminiscence, or the thought 
of any of them ! But this earth may undergo a com- 
plete conflagration, and yet not be even changed in its 
structure. Take a piece of asbestos cloth ; cast it into 
the fire ; it will become red-hot ; not a bit of it is consum- 
ed, not an atom of it changed. In the same manner, take 
the potter's vessel formed of the finest clay ; lay on it the 
most exquisite pictures — and I have seen pottery with 
paintings worthy of the masters of the age — put it into 
the red fire ; that pottery will be made hard by heat ; 
and the most exquisite traces of the pencil, instead of 
being removed, will only be made fixed and permanent 



36 THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 

while the pottery lasts. So we may consider that this 
earth may be thrown into that last heat that is destined to 
consume it ; and when I speak of a conflagration consum- 
ing the earth I am not giving an opinion, I am stating a 
sure and absolute future fact predicted in the plainest 
speech in God's holy word. 

There is one other thought I must here call attention 
to : the prediction at the close of this passage, namely, 
" The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion 
shall eat straw like the bullock ; and dust shall be the 
serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all 
my holy mountain, saith the Lord." Now physiolgists 
will tell you that to take this literally is absurd ; that the 
lion was made to tear ; that the ox is physically made to 
be graminivorous ; that the tiger is physically made to be 
carnivorous. It is well known that the viscera of the ox 
are, I believe, nine times his own length ; the viscera of 
the lion, I think, only three times his own length ; and 
that the physiological structure is such that the habits are 
indicated by this physical organization. But we should 
never forget that the fall of man was not an unexpected 
incident that overtook God ; he saw it all ; and it is not 
unreasonable to suppose that he made provision for the 
contingency before that contingency took place. This we 
know for certain, that in Paradise all was harmony, and 
peace, and love ; and this we also know, that every pre- 
diction of that glorious future in which all past ages shall 
be crowned gives the idea of the brute creation participat- 
ing in the benefit of man's restoration. We are told by 
the apostle, "all creation," the earth, " groaneth and 
travaileth in pain, seeking to be delivered ; " there is 
nothing but agony in the depths, agony in the bights ; all 



LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. 



37 



nature is disturbed ; its key-note was lost in Paradise, it is 
only found in Christ ; and its harmony cannot be till that 
key-note is struck again. But here we are told that all 
those animals now living in hostility shall be restored to 
harmony and peace. Everywhere throughout the Bible 
we are told that moral causes have physical effects. For 
instance, in Joel we read : " The vine is dried up, and the 
fig tree languisheth ; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree 
also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are 
withered." Why? " Because joy is withered away from 
the sons of men." Here is a moral calamity followed by 
physical disasters. So again in the prophet Jeremiah we 
have another picture of the same thing, the 12th chapter, 
at the 4th verse : " How long shall the land mourn, and 
the herbs of every field wither for the wickedness of them 
that dwell therein ? the beasts are consumed, and the 
birds; because they said, He shall not see our last end." 
I might quote other passages to show that a moral trans- 
formation has its reaction in a physical regeneration or 
transformation also. And if it be true that man's fall 
brought discord into the animal creation, is it not reasona- 
ble to argue that man's restoration shall bring harmony 
into that creation again? As Mr. Bonar says: "Is 
there anything either preposterous or absurd in supposing 
God's goodly handiwork shall be fully restored ; that crea- 
tion shall cease to groan, and that the beasts of the field 
shall no longer devour each other? " And if I needed a 
confirmatory evidence of what I am now saying, I w T ould 
quote what is said of the serpent : " Dust shall be the 
serpent's meat." Let us mark well that strange and sug- 
gestive clause : the other brutes, the lion, the tiger, the 
ox, the sheep, the lamb, are all to live in perfect harmony 



33 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



and felicity, recognising man as their lord, when man re- 
ceives Christ as his King, Creator, and Redeemer ; but 
one exception is made: " Dust shall be the serpent's 
meat." What was the curse pronounced upon the ser- 
pent ? {: Dust shalt thou eat for ever ; " and here is the 
curse continued. The only exception to the universal res- 
toration of the brute creation is the serpent; and the curse 
is to lie upon him. as upon him of whom he became the 
instrument, for ever and for ever. Now if that was a 
literal curse literally denounced upon the serpent, and to 
be literally continued. I look upon the restoration of har- 
mony in the brute creation as a literal result of the res- 
toration of harmony between the sinner and God the 
Saviour. When I want to strengthen my faith, I take a 
retrospective glance to that lowly birth in the manger, to 
that cross upon the mount of Calvary ; but when I want 
to get a little sunshine into this wintry, dark world, why 
should I be debarred starting on the wings of hope, and 
gazing into that glorious future when o'er our ransomed 
world Christ, Redeemer, King, Creator, shall come again 
to reign ? I confess I love to look into the future, guided 
by God's word, just as much as to look back into the past ; 
for as a Christian my constituent elements are faith, which 
leans upon the cross ; and love, that looks up to the 
throne ; and hope, that shoots into the future, and comes 
back with the sweet olive branch in its mouth, to convince 
me that evil shall not last for ever. 



FORELIGHTS OF THE GLORY. 



89 



LECTURE III. 

FORELIGHTS OF THE GLORY. 

We revert to those remarkable -words of God, so fraught 
with jo j and gladness : — 

" But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that -which I create ; for, he- 
hold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy," &c. — 
Isaiah lxv. 18 — 25. 

I commenced my last explanatory remarks on this most 
interesting, but in some respects difficult chapter by no- 
ticing what I have ascertained from considerable research, 
that many writers on prophetic subjects are persuaded 
that whilst the risen saints, or those raised from the dead 
and glorified when Christ comes ; and the changed saints, ' 
or those who do not die — " for we shall not all die, but 
some shall be changed ; " are with Christ in the glorv 
cloud or shechinah, or in the New Jerusalem, the splen- 
did capital and metropolis of the earth; that there will 
be, cotemporaneous with them who have emerged from 
the world's last fiery baptism, and unconsumed by it. 
others somewhere on earth who shall live in the flesh as we 
do now : the vast and overwhelming majority they think 
will be righteous ; and incidental evil, in the words of 



40 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



Horatio Bonar, shall be " like specks on the sun." but ex- 
isting until the close of the millennial day ; when all evil, 
in its most infinitesimal degree, shall be expunged, and 
the earth shall be the porch and the vestibule of a holy 
and a happy universe. " Behold, I create new heavens 
and a new earth," is the promise quoted by Peter in the 
3rd chapter of his Second Epistle, where he says that 
" the earth and the things that are therein shall be burn- 
ed up, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat;" 
after which " we, according to his promise," in Isaiah, 
" look for a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwell- 
eth righteousness." From this it appears that the confla- 
gration of the old framework — not its annihilation, but 
its improvement — shall take place when Christ is reveal- 
ed from heaven in the day of the Lord, taking vengeance 
in flaming fire upon them that disobey him, while he comes 
to be glorified and admired in all them that believe. If 
this promise, " 1 create new heavens and a new earth," in 
the 17th verse, be the commencement of the millennial 
heavens and the millennial earth, as I hold it unquestion- 
ably is, how am I to explain all the features there given 
consistently with the belief that all is perfect, and pure, 
and holy?' "The voice of weeping shall be no more 
heard in her : " that is most satisfactory to those who 
hold the idea I have invariably impressed that there shall 
be no more tears, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor death, dur- 
ing the millennium. But then comes the expression in 
the 20th verse, and it is the difficulty. Translated ac- 
cording to the Septuagint, it is : " There shall not be any 
more carried out thence to burial an infant of days ; " 
that is compatible with there being no death; u nor an old 
man who has not filled his time ; " that also is perfectly 



FORELIGIITS OF THE GLORY. 



41 



compatible with there being no death ; "for the man of 
an hundred years shall be as a youth." Yes, the aged 
man that is raised at the last day will live forever in his 
meridian vigor, youth, and perfection ; retaining all the 
identity of his physical economy, but radiant with immor- 
tal youth, and shining with a lustre that never shall be 
impaired. Then comes the last clause : " For the child 
shall die an hundred years old ; but the sinner being an 
hundred years old shall be accursed," A solution given 
by some is, that the words, " the sinner being an hun- 
dred years old shall be accursed ; ' are added to describe 
what takes place at the close of a thousand years ; for at the 
close of the thousand years we read that nations in the 
four quarters of the globe break forth, and are afterwards 
crushed and destroyed. Another difficulty, supposing this 
passage describes the millennial rest, is : " they shall 
build houses." This is obvious metaphor. It is the rep- 
resentation of a state of perfect, felicity and safety. Peo- 
ple now build a house and do not live to dwell in it ; or 
they build a house and another seizes it ; and it may and 
perhaps does mean, taking it in the figurative sense, which 
is perfectly legitimate, there shall be absolute and unin- 
terrupted security: " the gates of it shall not be shut," 
are words used of the apocalyptic city, in the Apocalypse ; 
it may not mean that the city will literally have gates ; 
it may be a figurative expression denoting perpetual peace. 
Then the expression, " not bring forth for trouble ; " if 
that be an allusjon to the curse pronounced upon Eve, one 
cannot suppose births to take place during the millennial 
rest ; but clearly it must be accepted as a declaration that 
there shall be no curse, and therefore no more consequen- 
ces of that curse. Then the last verse : " The wolf and 



42 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



the lamb shall feed together ; " that is certainly compati- 
ble with all that is predicted in the millennial rest ; for as 
the brutes fell with man, on man's restoration the brutes 
shall be restored to harmony. 

Let me in the course of these remarks — and I will al- 
lude to some of these points as I proceed — show, first, 
what is stated to precede this happy sabbath of a thousand 
years ; what are the marks of the Saturday evening that 
merges into the twilight of a thousand years' day of bless- 
edness and sunshine ; and in the second place, try to ex- 
plain what succeeds the dawn of that blessed era ; and 
thus bring before you some of the difficulties that cling to 
the features of the millennial age indicated by the prophet. 
What may we expect to precede it? One very awful 
feature will characterize the Saturday evening, the six 
thousandth year, that precedes the seventh, or the millen- 
nary of the world, if such it be. t£ This know, that in 
the last days perilous times shall come. For ' ' — and 
here is what shall precede it ; the nearer its sunburst the 
denser will be the moral darkness that precedes — " men 
shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, 
proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, 
unholy ; without natural affection, truce-breakers, false 
accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are 
good, traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures 
more than lovers of God ; having a form of godliness, 
but denying the power thereof." Here are some of the 
awful brands which are to mark many at the close of this 
economy ; but out of all, and in spite of all, will emerge 
and shine with more resplendent lustre the true church of 
the Lord Jesus Christ. We shall see these things more 
by the contrast ; the light and the shadow will become the 



FORELIGHTS OF THE GLORY. 



43 



one darker, the other only the more brilliant. Preceding 
that event, the coming of the Lord, the conflagration of 
the earth, the new heavens and the new earth, there will 
be a more extensive preaching of the Gospel than ever 
there was before. Is not this a clear sign of the age ? 
Was the Gospel ever more faithfully, more fully, more 
earnestly, more extensively preached than it is at the pres- 
ent hour ? Why, many of you have lived to recollect 
that for a bishop to preach in a play-house would have 
almost ended in his head being taken off, or his being 
banished from the church ; and for any minister of the 
Gospel to go and preach from a wagon or ah omnibus, as 
the Bishop of London now and then does, would have been 
set down as undignified, or arrant and intolerable fanati- 
cism. But now-a-days, in all places, in the exercise of a 
common sense that is admirable, and at all times, we hear 
of men of all denominations setting forth with marvellous 
perspicuity and power the preciousness of the soul, the 
instancy of eternity, the efficacy of a Saviour's blood, the 
shortness of the time, the nearness of the end, and the 
necessity of all making ready and preparing to meet the 
Lord. There will be previous to this period a pentecostal 
effusion of the Holy Spirit of God. I have stated in my 
book, " Redemption Draweth Nigh." that I believed the 
Pentecost of 1800 years ago was but the flush of morn, 
preparatory to the noon ; but the early shower — the lat- 
ter rains being yet to come. The language of Joel in his 
2d chapter has not yet been exhausted ; it remains yet to 
be fulfilled. For what does he say? " I will pour out 
my Spirit upon all flesh ; " that is the first ; not upon the 
Jews, nor a handful of Gentiles assembled at Jerusalem ; 
but ' ; I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your 



44 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



sons and your daughters shall prophesy ; your old men 
shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions ; 
and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in 
those days will I pour out my Spirit." Then he says: 
' : And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the 
earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun 
shall be turned into darkness; " this has not taken place; 
bur Lord says it will take place when he comes ; " and the 
moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of 
the Lord come." 

Now I ask you at this moment to look around and see un- 
precedented numbers of men who are not ministers preach- 
ing the Gospel of Christ with no common power and suc- 
cess. He says: "I will pour out my Spirit upon all 
flesh ; " and men and handmaids, and servants, and wo- 
men, shall all speak. I have no doubt that the impression 
produced by the Spirit of God poured out upon all flesh 
will be so intense, and so vivid, and so irresistible, that 
you will have mothers preaching in their homes, servants 
preaching in the hall, tradesmen sparing an hour from 
business in order to go and preach the Gospel. The 
church will have her volunteers as well as the nation. 
Men, some of whose antecedents are anything but bril- 
liant, are now preaching the Gospel with marvellous effica- 
cy and power ; and though we may not like their taste, 
though we may be pained by many of the expressions they 
employ, injudicious and indiscreet as they are, yet God 
uses sometimes very rough instruments to do very rough 
work : and if they are the means of bringing souls to the 
Saviour, and hastening on the kingdom of Christ, we will 
pardon the rough garment for the sake of the brilliant- 
truth that is expressed by the lips of him that wears it. 



F0RELIGHT3 OF THE GLOEY. 



45 



There will be not only the universal preaching of the Gos- 
pel at all hours, in all places ; but there will be also a 
somewhat like preparation of all flesh for that great day. 
Some think that the words, " I will send Elijah before 
the great and terrible day of the Lord," was fulfilled in 
the advent of John the Baptist ; and that all that we are 
to understand by the promise of Elijah preceding Christ's 
second advent is merely the spirit of preparation being 
infused everywhere previous to that era. But this does 
not seem to me to exhaust the words of Scripture. *Tor 
instance, our Lord says : " Truly Elijah shall first come, 
and restore all things;" but then he adds, "Elijah is 
come already." The two things seem inconsistent ; but 
it does appear to me from various reasons that Elijah will 
personally precede Christ who comes to reign, just as John 
the Baptist personally preceded Christ who came to suf- 
fer. Recollect that Elijah needs not to be raised from the 
dead ; he never saw death ; he was translated ; and why 
translated, unless for some sublime mission similar to that 
which is here indicated ? Let us mark well our Lord's 
words. He says : " Truly Elijah shall first come, and 
restore all things." But if Elijah was John the Bap- 
tist can it be said of J olm that he restored all things ? 
He did not restore anything at all ; he preached repentance. 
Then if you say, how do you explain the other passage, 
11 Elijah is come already? " I explain it by referring to 
the corresponding passage in Luke, where he says : " John 
the Baptist shall go before him in the spirit and power 
of Elijah ; " in other words, John the Baptist came in the 
spirit and power of Elijah ; but he was not Elijah. Our 
Lord says of John the Baptist that " he came, and they 
knew him not ; but have done unto him whatsoever they 



46 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



listed ; likewise also shall the Son of man suffer of 
them." What does he here say ? He says John the 
Baptist came, and they killed him ; but that cannot be said 
of Elijah ; he never was killed ; he was translated ; he 
is in glory ; and if he came to the earth in the person of 
John the Baptist, he could not have been killed. But cer- 
tain parties appealed to John himself ; they came to him 
and said : " Art thou Messiah ? And he said, No. Art 
thou that prophet ? He said, No. Art thou Elijah ? 
And he said, I am not Elijah." Well, John the Baptist 
surely knew who he was ; and yet he denied that he was 
Elijah who is to come and restore all things. The pas- 
sage, ' ; This is Elijah, that ought to come," the French 
translators have given the right meaning of : C'est V Elie 
qui devait venir.^ "This is that Elijah who ought to 
come," now, at this moment; the Elijah that you are to 
look for now is John the Baptist ; he is come in the spirit 
and power of Elijah ; but Elijah personally is yet to come, 
and precede my glorious advent to triumph and to reign. 
It does therefore seem highly probable that before our 
Lord comes, Elijah, who is living in the body, who never 
died, and is not therefore to be raised from the dead, will 
herald the return of the Prince of Peace ; and just as a 
suffering Baptist came to precede a suffering Christ so a 
glorified Elijah will come to precede a glorified and a 
triumphant Christ ; at least I cannot explain these passages 
in any other way. If you can satisfy yourselves that 
my inference is not sustained by these passages, then you 
must explain them otherwise ; but it seems to me the 
inevitable inference from these clauses that a personal 
Elijah is personally to precede the coming of the Son of 
man. 



FO RELIGHTS OF THE GLORY. 



47 



Another mark of the approach of this era will be great 
scoffing as the world listens to the voice of the preacher : 
" Behold, the Bridegroom cometh." We are told in the 
Epistle of Jude : " Beloved, remember ye the words 
which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus 
Christ ; how that they told you there should be mockers 
in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly 
lusts; " or, as Peter says in his Epistle : "In the last 
time there shall be scoffers, saying, Where is the promise 
of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things 
continue as they were." But nevertheless shall be usher- 
ed in that great event, the burden of a thousand prophe- 
cies, the object of a thousand promises, namely, the glo- 
rious appearing of Jesus Christ, the great God and Sav- 
iour. I do not know a single passage in Scripture that 
states there is to be the millennium, and after it Christ is 
to come. The whole of Christendom believes there is to 
be a millennium ; there is no doubt about that ; but some 
good men believe the millennium dawns first, and Christ 
comes at its setting. I cannot see any warrant for that in 
the Word of God. Whatever be the nature of his mani- 
festation ; whatever be the splendor with which he comes 
in the clouds of heaven ; whatever be the manner in which 
he shall appear, whether as the shechinah that dwelt be- 
tween the cherubim in the glory cloud, or in whatever way 
he shall appear, all Scripture is full of the thought that 
he will come first, and the millennium succeed next. The 
sun will rise first above the horizon, then will be the light 
of day ; not the day first, and the sun afterwards, but the 
sun first, and the sunshine after. And hence the words 
constantly used in Scripture: "Behold I come as a 
thief." " The day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the 



48 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



night ; for when they shall say. Peace, peace ; sudden de- 
struction shall come upon them, as travail upon a woman 
with child." So again we read that: "As the days of 
Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 
For as in the days that were before the flood they were 
eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, un- 
til the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not 
until the flood came, and took them all away ; so shall 
also the coming of the Son of man be." And again we 
read : " The grace of God teacheth us to live soberly, 
righteously, godly, in this present world, looking for that 
blessed hope, the glorious appearing of Jesus Christ, our 
great God and Saviour." When he comes, this passage 
in Peter will be fulfilled: "The earth and the things 
that are therein shall be burned up ; the elements shall 
melt with fervent heat ; " and they shall be superceded by, 
or rather they shall blossom into a new heaven and a new 
earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Now these are 
some of the antecedents of that great and glorious event. 

If any ask when it shall be, my answer to that is, the 
day and the hour no man can give. It has often been giv- 
en for me in newspapers, in magazines of all sorts and 
shapes ; but where they find the foundation of what they 
affirm I do not know. In " Redemption Draweth Nigh," 
I devoted two chapters to an analysis of the dates of 
prophecy ; but constantly I have repeated, what I cannot 
get some people to understand or at least to accept, that I 
am not sure when the date begins ; and therefore I am 
not sure of the time when it closes. I give a solution of 
those dates on certain likely principles ; but repeatedly 
and again I added, I may be wrong ; I may be in error in 



FOEELIGHTS OF THE GLORY. 



49 



my calculations ; I may be wrong in tlie commencement 
of the date ; I may be so in the assignment of its close. 

The great epoch of 1260 years some begin at A. d. 532, 
ending it at 1792 ; adding the other periods of Daniel, 
ending in 1867. Others begin the same great period in 
the year 606. But the remarkable fact that I have brought 
out is not that the world is to end in 1867, which I never 
prophesied anywhere : nor that the world is to close its 
present state at that year ; but that great chronological 
periods of prophecy bisect that year, and intersect each 
other at that year ; and strange to say, men that begin 
these dates at different periods, on different grounds find 
them meeting about 1867, as the termination of them all. . 
But what is immediately to succeed I cannot say. What 
is to take place at the exhaustion of the great periods men 
have different opinions of. The opinion of some very em- 
inent scholars is that Mahometanism and Romanism are 
to depart like a cloud, and that the whole earth is to be 
filled with light, and joy, and peace ; others seem to in- 
cline to the belief that jn 1867 will be the close of this 
present economy, and the commencement of another and 
a better ; but no sane man that I know has put on the 
mantle of the prophet, and predicted the close of the 
world in 1867 ; and it is only an evidence of the fearful 
want of charity in the last times, and of Peter's predicted 
scoffing of scoffers, that they should make such statements 
on so absurd, unjust, and untenable premises. When 
therefore it is to be no man can state ; none of us know ; 
none of us can absolutely determine ; but it is a duty to 
explain these dates if we can ; it is a duty to ask your at- 
tention to them ; and that minister of the Gospel does not 
seem to me to fulfil his mission who skips the difficult parts 
3 



50 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



of Scripture, and treats you only to those select texts that 
have been discussed over and over again. There are cer- 
tain texts that every preacher in Christendom preaches on, 
but thousands of texts most precious no preacher ever 
seems to touch. It is our duty to try and explain the 
whole Word of God, and to make plain and intelligible to 
the people, as far as God may enable us, the marvellous 
things of the Gospel of the kingdom of heaven. Some 
have said, however, that it is a very wrong thing to study 
prophecy at all, or to attempt to explain what has not been 
fulfilled. I will read to you a passage from the writings 
of Dr. Villiers, late Bishop of Durham, vindicating the 
very things I am now speaking of : " Some persons tell 
us that interpreters of prophecy differ so widely that it is 
useless to study it, and that it only tends to discompose 
and unsettle men's minds ; and therefore, they say, it 
would be much better to leave it alone. But, my breth- 
ren, are we at liberty to take up this subject ? What 
important doctrine has not formed the subject of dispute ? 
Take the very question of God's electing love and sov- 
ereign grace ; it is not at all unlikely that among those to 
whom I am speaking there may be some that do not hold 
the view of our 17th Article ; and yet they would be very 
much surprised if I were not to read the 1st chapter of 
the Epistle to the Ephesians, or the 9th chapter of the 
Epistle to the Romans, because men dispute about them. 
But even supposing that these prophecies were subjects of 
dispute, even supposing that they did unsettle men's minds, 
who has given us leave to cull out portions of the Word 
of God ? who has taught us that the promises of God are 
to be set aside as of no importance to us ? Just let me 
refer you to one passage in the Book of Revelation, con- 



FORELIGHTS OF THE GLORY. 



51 



fessedly a most beautiful book, and confessedly referring 
to things to come. It is in the 3rd verse of the 1st chap- 
ter. We read : \ Blessed is he that readeth, and they that 
hear the words of this prophecy.' Surely, brethren," 
adds the Bishop, " we are not so very rich in our posses- 
sion of blessings that we can afford to throw one blessing 
away ; and if we cannot throw it away, how can we close 
our eyes to the study of unfulfilled prophecy ? " Most 
just and sensible remarks, whether uttered by a Bishop 
or a Presbyter, and worthy of being accepted and regard- 
ed by every Christian man. 

Let us now try to ascertain what succeeds the advent 
of Christ, the conflagration of the earth, that inaugurates 
a new heavens and a new earth. First of all, there will 
be the resurrection of all that have fallen asleep in Christ. 
Of this we are absolutely sure ; for the apostle says in 
the Epistle to the Thessalonians that Christ shall descend, 
that the trumpet shall sound. He tells us : " For if we 
believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also 
which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this 
we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which 
are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall 
not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord him- 
self shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the 
voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God ; and 
the dead in Christ " — " in Christ " is the definition of a 
Christian ; u there is no condemnation to them that are in 
Christ " — ■ " and the dead in Christ," that is, the Chris- 
tian dead, u shall rise first." The rest of the dead do not 
rise till the thousand years are finished. 11 Then we which 
are alive and remain shall be caught up together with 
them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air ; and so 



52 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



shall we ever be with the Lord." This is the first thing 
that will take place. There is something unspeakbly 
grand in the thought that the green turf shall roll aside, 
and the cold ashes that have slept for a thousand years 
beneath it shall be quickened with life, and rise in immor- 
tality, incorruptibility, and beauty ; Abraham and Sarah 
from the oaks of Mamre ; the apostles, and prophets, and 
preachers and teachers from the dens and caves of the 
Alps ; the great ocean, the sepulchre of nations, shall 
pour forth its buried millions ; and they shall rise, and 
reign with Christ a thousand years ; and this mortal shall 
put on immortality, tltis corruptible incorruptibility ; and 
then, for it is not yet brought to pass, " then shall be 
brought to pass the saying that is written, death, where 
is thy sting? grave, where is thy victory?" Death 
shall be swallowed up in victory. All this we are per- 
fectly sure of. The second thing that takes place will be, 
Satan shall be bound a thousand years. You ask, is this 
literal? Unquestionably it is literal. Take Cruden's 
Concordance, and look out the words "bind" and 
" bound," and you will see that it must be taken here as 
literal, strictly literal. He shall be bound a thousand 
years. What does he do now ? With all the archangel's 
wisdom, inspired by all the fiend's depravity, he goeth 
about seeking whom he may devour. I believe that great 
crimes have a Satanic birth ; that the more flagrant crimes 
that deform our history are the inspiration of the wicked 
one ; and perhaps if we knew all we should mingle pity 
with our reprobation of the greatest criminal upon earth. 
But at that day Satan shall have the glory of all he has 
done ; and God shall have the glory of all that he has 
done ; and Satan shall be removed from our world for a 



FOKELIGHTS OP THE GLORY. 



53 



thousand years — no more the prince of the power of the 
air ; no more to go about seeking whom he may devour ; 
no more to inject into men's hearts sparks that kindle evil 
passions, and into men's minds clouds that darken precious 
truths. That one fact, that Satan shall be removed from 
his action on our world, will be the lifting up of that world 
to a new, a nobler, a lovelier level. In the third place, 
there shall come upon our earth all the happiness of Para- 
dise ; there shall be Eden atmosphere, Eden earth ; Eden 
flowers shall bloom, and Eden trees shall grow. The 
groans of earth shall cease ; its travail and its expectancy 
will be over ; and there will be a new heaven and a new 
earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. The brute crea- 
tion then existing shall live in harmony and peace together. 
Man's fall brought the discord ; man's restoration shall 
restore them into harmony. It was never meant that the 
brutes should devour and destroy each other. The only 
difficulty that remains is what I have already referred to : 
the incidental allusions to death ; the remark that at the 
close of the thousand years Satan is loosed — why he is 
loosed I cannot say ; but depend upon it there is a reason 
for it, because there is Scripture sanctioning the assertion 
— and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the 
four quarters of the earth. But who are these nations ? 
There the difficulty crops up ; because as far as we have 
seen only the risen dead in glorified bodies are the inhabi- 
tants of the millennial temple ; but here we read that 
there will still be wicked nations that exist somewhere ; 
we find also that the false prophet in some shape has his life 
perpetuated; for we read : " the devil that deceived them 
was cast into the lake of fire, where the beast and the 
false prophet are ; and shall be tormented day and night 



54 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



for ever." I believe this in its strict and rigid literality. 
We find, therefore, the existence of these nations ; we 
read, secondly, of Satan being loosed. 

When we turn to Isaiah xi. there are words that seem to 
indicate infants present in the millennial day ; for we read 
there : " The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the 
leopard shall lie down with the kid ; and the calf and the 
young lion and the fatling together ; and a little child shall 
lead them." Then again we read; "The cow and the 
bear shall feed ; their young ones shall lie down together ; 
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking 
child shall play on the hole of the asp ; and the weaned 
child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den." These 
are features I dare not conceal and cannot perfectly ex- 
plain, except upon the hypothesis held by the same able 
and eminent interpreters of prophecy, that there will be 
two races on the millennial earth, the glorified saints min- 
istering to the church below ; but that as now the vast ma- 
jority of the world are strangers to the truth, and Christ's 
flock is a small one, then it will be reversed ; and the vast 
majority, the overwhelming majority will be regenerate 
persons ; and only incidental sin, and sickness, and death 
will be there ; and they also believe that those who con- 
stitute the church, then, the visible church, will enjoy di- 
rectly all the blessings and benefits of the ransomed and 
the renovated earth. They say, for instance, that " the 
child shall die an hundred years old" is to be accepted 
literally. What was the age of man before the flood ? A 
thousand years. And they say that those who are not 
risen, those who are not in glorified bodies, will live a 
thousand years ; that is, live out the millennial day ; and 
only incidentally, shall those cases of death and sin oc- 



FORELIGHTS OF THE GLORY. 



55 



cur which are indicated in those passages I have alluded to. 
But then we find that, some way or another, if this be true 

— and I am only stating candidly all the difficulties, for 
there are difficulties, and it would be unfair and unjust to 
deny them — that those nations that come up at the end of 
the thousand years must be very numerous ; and secondly, 
they must be very wicked ; because they come up to seek to 
destroy the camp and the saints of the Most High. I notice 
too that expression even in the height of millennial felicity, 
assuming that the 21st and 22d chapters of Revelation de- 
scribe the millennial rest : " and they shall bring the glory 
and honor of the nations into it. And the nations of them 
that are saved." And then how remarkable is that expres- 
sion : " the tree yielded her fruit every month ; and the 
leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations / " 
Some have proposed a solution of a great difficulty ; that the 
millennial day is also the day of judgment. I do not 
believe that the day of judgment means twenty-four 
hours. It is in all probability a protracted period. 
Whilst the risen saints are not judged, but glorified, many 
believe, and if I mistake not, Dr. Villiers among the 
rest — certainly the late Edward Bickersteth believed it 

— that the passage in Matthew xxiv. is the picture of 
what will occur even in the millennial day, where we 
read: u Immediately after the tribulation of those days 
shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give 
her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the 
powers of the heavens shall be shaken ; " probably by 
the great conflagration described in Peter. "And then 
shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven ; and 
then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall 
see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with 



56 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with 
a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together 
his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to 
the other." And in the next place : " When the Son of 
man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with 
him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory ; and 
before him shall be gathered all nations " — the nations 
constantly spoken of — " and he shall separate them one 
from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the 
goats ; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but 
the goats on the left." The impression of many is that 
the whole millennial day will be ceaseless manifestation 
of judgment or discrimination exercised upon the living 
who emerge from the last conflagration, and constitute the 
nations of the earth ; a portion apostate, a portion loyal ; 
a portion unregenerate, a portion regenerate. 

I have thus told out all the difficulty, and the only 
difficulty, that we have to deal with. I have read all I 
could lay my hand on ; I have thought it over in every 
shape ; and the difficulty still presents itself to me as at 
present insuperable, how, if the 21st and 22d chapters of 
Revelation are the photographic portraits of the millennial 
day, there are to be somewhere nations that will come up 
in the end against the camp of the saints of the Most 
High : how there is to be evil, sin or sickness, or sorrow, 
however infinitesimal, I cannot explain. Perhaps as the 
day draws nearer God may give us more and brighter 
light 

Let me quote one or two passages from eminent men 
upon this subject. Dr. Chalmers says, on the 50th 
Psalm : " This looks like the descent of the Son of man 
on the Mount of Olives, with all the accompaniments of 



FORELIGrHTS OF THE GLORY. 



57 



the Jewish conversion, the first resurrection from the 
dead, and the destruction of the hosts of Antichrist." 
Dr. Chalmers, in his earlier days, opposed the views I am 
now stating ; in his latter days, and in his ripe mind, he 
acquiesced in those views, and boldly proclaimed them. 
On Isaiah xi. he says : " Christ will appear for his own ; 
then will be the days of love and universal peace ; when 
the animals shall cease to devour each other. And this 
regeneration of the world is obviously combined with the 
restoration of the Jews to their own land." He says on 
another passage : " This seeing eye to eye makes for the 
personal reign of Christ, whose feet shall stand on the 
Mount of Olives." Bishop Butler, the most powerful 
mind probably that ever lived, the author of that magnifi- 
cent and marvellous work the Analogy, says : " Things 
of this kind in John naturally turn the thoughts of serious 
men towards the full completion of prophetic history re- 
specting the final restoration of the Jews. The glorious 
reign of Christ," says Bishop Butler, " shall commence 
when we shall reign with him on the earth." Dr. Urwick, 
of Dublin, who does not acquiesce in all these thoughts, 
says of one : ' 1 The Lord who on the cross spoiled princi- 
palities and powers will not stay in his career till he wrests 
the very earth itself from the grasp of its usurper , re- 
creating the earth in unrivalled purity and glory, and 
taking possession of it with his people." Now Dr. Ur- 
wick, an eloquent and good man, differs from me on some 
of these thoughts, but in the main thought he is at one. 
Dr. Chalmers, again, observes: " As far as we can read 
into prophecies before us, we feel as if there is to be the 
arrest of a sudden and unlooked-for visitation to be laid 
on the ordinary processes of nature and history ; and that 



58 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



the millennium is to be ushered in in the midst of judg- 
ments, and desolations, and fearful convulsions, which will 
uproot the present framework of society. " So I am not 
alone in the thoughts I have given expression to. 

One thing closes beautifully this interesting passage : 
Jerusalem shall be a rejoicing and her people a joy. 
Over all the area on which the risen saints shall meet ; in 
that consecrated metropolis of which they will be the 
inhabitants, and over which will hang the glory, there will 
be nothing but joy. Jerusalem shall be a rejoicing ; no 
more weeping, nor tears, nor sadness, in that grand cathe- 
dral ; no flag-stone will be lifted for the burial of the 
dead ; no funeral chant will be heard within its walls ; no 
funeral procession will wind along its aisles or will darken 
its beautiful light. All hearts there will be bounding; 
none shall be breaking. Every heart shall pour forth its 
thankfulness to God as a star its light in gratitude, as a 
flower its perfume in praise. There will be no wilderness 
unreclaimed ; no discord in their songs ; no misery un- 
atoned for, no sin unforgiven ; there will be no more tears, 
nor sorrow, nor crying ; there shall be no more death. 
Notwithstanding all the difficulties, I take the 21st and 
22d chapters of Revelation as literal predictions of what 
is to be, and believe that the full actualization is to take 
place in that new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth 
righteousness. The cry of the miserable Jews who as- 
semble on Saturday near the mosque of Omar : "El Bene 
— Bene bethka bekarob — bemheira — bemheira beya- 
raenu, bekarob : " " Lord, build — Lord, build, build thy 
house — speedily, in haste — even in our day build thy 
house speedily ! " will soon be answered. In the words 
of a sweet poet — 



FORELIGrHTS OF THE GLORY. 



" Sometimes flashes on my sight, 
Through present wrongs, the eternal right ; 
And step by step since time began 
I see the steady gain of man. 

" And still the new transcends the old 
In signs and tokens manifold. 
Slaves rise up men — the olive waves 
With roots deep set in battle-graves. 

" Through the harsh voices of our day 
A low sweet prelude finds its way; 
Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear, 
A light is breaking calm and clear. 

" That song of love, now low and far, 
Ere long shall swell from star to star; 
That light the breaking day which tips 
The golden-spired Apocalypse." 



60 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



LECTUEE IV. 

THE BINDING OF SATAN. 

The archangel fallen is reserved for chains. He is a 
usurper and an intruder now, and must be expelled at 
that day. St. John says — 

" And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the 
bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand," &c. — Revela- 
tion xx. 1 — 5. 

I need not remark once more that on subjects confessedly 
relating to the future, good men — eminently Christian 
men — are at issue ; I do not mean to say they quarrel, 
but they differ ; and it would be strange if in speaking of 
those events that stretch into future ages, we should all 
see eye to eye. But I cannot help mentioning a most re- 
markable fact, the fulfilment of a prediction of the great 
Sir Isaac Newton, the most accomplished and the most 
successful student of prophecy ; — he who unbraided the 
sunbeam ; he who weighed the stars in his balance ; he 
who estimated their density, and measured their bulk, and 
calculated their distances and their progression in their or- 
bits, descended from the loftiest physical investigations to 



THE BINDING OF SATAN. 



61 



the study of the grandest apocalyptic predictions, and so 
became the most successful student that ever tried to un- 
fold and to explain the mysteries and the meaning of this 
book. He has stated, what has been literally fulfilled, that 
an age would come when men would study this book more 
than they had ever done, and when they would agree much 
more about its meaning, and its import, and its application, 
than they had ever agreed before. This is fact ; for 
whilst some still retain a process of solution that I think 
is untenable, the most eminent, the most learned, the most 
gifted, and I may add equally pious, hold an interpreta- 
tion which seems to me to be the just, and textual, and 
scriptural one. Let me show first of all how this chapter 
has been understood by some. There are, first, those — 
a number gradually diminishing — who think that the an- 
gel binding Satan is purely figurative ; that the resurrec- 
tion of the saints, called the first resurrection, is merely 
the elevation and the ascendancy of Christianity, and the 
ascendancy of true Christians ; that evil will be very much 
subdued during these happy years ; and that those be- 
headed for the witness of Jesus mean not the resurrection 
of literally such, but of men of like spirit, like love, like 
faithfulness ; who shall be spiritually ascendant, and shall 
spiritually reign with the Lord Jesus Christ, not present 
himself upon earth, but reigning by his Spirit in the hearts 
of his people. They hold that this economy — for all look 
forward to such an economy — will be introduced by no 
grand and miraculous events, by no disturbance of the pres- 
ent equilibrium of things ; but that it will be the gradual 
expansion of what is truth, and life, and peace ; they un- 
derstand that it means simply a purer church, greater 
union among Christians, the places of influence and power 



62 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



consecrated and occupied by the good and the pious, and 
Christianity vastly predominating over all the earth and 
throughout the world in what is called the millennial era. 
This was an almost universal opinion in the last century • 
it is an opinion limited to a few, and these not the most 
enlightened, in the present century. The other school, 
which seems to me to be the true one, holds that the mil- 
lennial era, called millennial from millennium, which 
means a thousand years, spoken of in this chapter is to be 
introduced by the personal descent, and manifestation, and 
present glorious majesty of the Son of God, the Prince of 
Peace. They hold that the dead in Christ, that is, all 
Christians who have died, shall instantly be raised in their 
resurrection robes, the moment the trumpet sounds and 
Christ appears ; that all of us who are living at that day 
shall be changed, and it is possible, though I cannot pre- 
dict, that some here may never die ; that there may be 
some in every congregation who shall never see death ; for 
we that are alive when the Lord comes shall not die, but 
we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an 
eye, all imperfection shall be eliminated, all sin shall be 
exhausted ; and this humanity of ours, like a glorious 
shrine, fit for the residence of a glorious and immortal in- 
mate, shall without undergoing the process of decay ap- 
pear with Christ in glory. It was just to teach this les- 
son that we find recorded in sacred history that Enoch 
never died, he was translated ; Elijah never died, he too 
was translated ; Moses died, and was raised from the dead, 
and appeared with Christ on Tabor — that scene that had 
all the splendor of heaven, but all the transience of a vi- 
sion upon earth. Moses raised from the dead, and those 
that were raised when Christ rose from the dead in Ari- 



THE BINDING OF SATAN. 



63 



mathea, are the types of the dead in Christ that shall be 
raised at that day ; Enoch and Elijah are the types and 
the earnests of the living in Christ that shall be changed. 
The instant, according to this solution — which I believe 
to be the scriptural and the just one — that Christ conies, 
the millennial sunshine, like a burst of celestial glory, 
shall overspread with its intense splendor heaven and earth, 
and every green sod shall be rolled aside, and every monu- 
ment of bronze shall be broken, and every marble mauso- 
leum shall crack ; and the dead in Christ shall be quick- 
ened, and they shall rise, and reign visibly with Christ 
personally and visibly in the midst of a renovated earth, 
and a pure air, and a bright sky, for the period of a thou- 
sand years. 

This being the solution of it that seems to me the most 
just and consistent, I would try to meet the objections 
that are said to lie at the very threshold of the solution 
I have ventured to give. First, it has been objected to 
this last exposition that the Book of Revelation is figura- 
tive, and that this chapter should be regarded as figurative 
also. I answer, the facts predicted in Revelation are liter- 
al ; the mode of expressing them is figurative. For in- 
stance, in this chapter the great white throne, the books be- 
ing opened, are figurative ; but the fact of the judgment is 
not figurative, but literal, because it is asserted and reassert- 
ed in many passages in God's holy Word. We must not 
confound two things that differ, the mode of expressing a fact 
and the fact itself : the fact itself may be strictly literal ; 
the mode of expressing that fact may be eminently figurative 
or metaphorical. It has been objected to the solution that 
I have given, that those that appear on this occasion and 



64 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



reign with Christ, without entering on the passage itself, 
are described as souls : k ' I saw the souls of them that 
were beheaded." But I need not tell you that the He- 
brew word Neph£sh, which means soul, and the Greek 
word ii'vpr], which means also soul, are constantly employ- 
ed in the Bible to denote persons ; in fact, it is the most • 
common thing possible to speak of a number of people as 
a number of souls. For instance : " Abraham took the 
souls that were gotten in Haran. In Joshua x. 28 : " He 
utterly destroyed them, and all the souls that were there- 
in." In Exodus xii. 4 : 11 Take a lamb according to the 
number of the souls ; " and so in Nineveh were so many 
souls. Here you have the word used to denote persons. 
And I contend that the expression " beheaded " indicates 
who they were that appeared on this occasion ; and being 
associated with the phrase, " This is the first resurrec- 
tion," a word that applies not to spirits, but to bodies, it 
so far settles the question, and proves that it is risen men 
that appear and reign with Christ a thousand years. Then 
it has been alleged, in the next place, that the resurrec- 
tion is delineated in the Gospel, for instance, as simulta- 
neous ; and that the idea here of some rising and reign- 
ing, and the others remaining in their graves, is incom- 
patible with the express assertion of the Word of God. I 
answer, there is no evidence of any such thing ; because 
the Gospel speaks of the resurrection, it does not follow 
that that resurrection may not have two divisions. The 
doctrine itself is the resurrection of all ; but there may 
be in that act of the resurrection not only a distinction in 
itself, as I shall afterwards shew, but there may be also 
the intervention of a period of time between the one 
resurrection and the other. I believe, and afterwards I 



THE BINDING OF SATAN. 



65 



will shew, though it is not necessary, that all true be- 
lievers are raised at the commencement of the thousand 
years; and that the rest of the dead, the unconverted, 
unregenerate dead, are raised at the end of the thousand 
years ; and therefore that the interval of a thousand years 
is between the first resurrection and that which is called 
the second or last resurrection of the dead. But it is ob- 
jected by some excellent Christians that it is unreasonable 
to suppose that the spirits that are happy in heaven should 
be brought down again to earth to be present there, and 
to reign with Christ for a thousand years. I answer by 
asking, what is heaven ? I believe with Dr. Chalmers it 
is not a place, but a condition ; I believe with him it is 
the spirits of believers in a state of perfect happiness, im- 
mediately contemplating and seeing Christ : but who can 
say that there may not be a stratum of such spirits, as it 
were, above where we now are ? I think there is reason 
to believe, that the spirits of those who have entered into 
glory are neither unconscious nor ignorant of what is 
transacting upon earth. But whether conscious or un- 
conscious, it is not necessary to believe that they are ma- 
terially, geographically remote, but merely that they are 
conditionally distinct from and superior to the state in 
which we Christians struggling here now are. Between 
the people in the crypt of a cathedral, where all is cold, 
damp, and dark, and the people worshipping upon the 
floor of the cathedral, there is but the thickness of a flag- 
stone two or three inches thick ; yet the conditions are 
totally different ; and the one has no connection with the 
other, unless when a door opens, and one ascends, and a 
flash of the celestial splendor breaks in, and a few notes 
of the heavenly song are heard ; but with that exception 



GG 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



the two conditions are perfectly distinct and separate from 
each other. 

I have never been able to read otherwise that beautiful 
allusion in the 12th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews ; 
and if I were alone in my interpretation I should hesitate ; 
but I find the ablest Greek critics — and one of the ablest 
is the present Dean of Canterbury, Dean Alford — concur 
in what I think is its true solution : " Seeing we are sur- 
rounded with so great a cloud of witnesses." What is a 
cloud ? It is the effect of the sun's heat that has taken 
up water or steam from the earth, and fixed it in what 
seems to us a thick mass, but what is really a body of thin 
vapor, waiting for the cold wind to touch and to condense 
it. Seeing we are surrounded by a cloud, a company, of 
those who have been exhaled or raised from earth by the 
fervor of the Sun of Righteousness, " let us run with 
patience the race set before us, looking unto Jesus." The 
idea unquestionably suggested is that those that we call 
dead in Christ live, and that they surround us precisely as 
spectators in an ancient amphitheatre. The ancient amphi- 
theatre was not like a modern theatre in England, a place 
where the very air is infected, and lighted up with gas, 
and the dense auditory shut in. It had no roof ; the peo- 
ple attended in the daytime ; the bright sun and the blue 
sky hung over them ; and the seats of the amphitheatre 
rose up in successive concentric tiers around, one tier 
rising above another, till, if we may judge from the re- 
mains of one in Rome, twenty, even thirty thousand peo- 
ple could all be seated, the spectators of the scene, on the 
arena or the floor where the wrestlers wrestled, having 
thus concentrated upon them some forty or sixty thousand 
interested and arrested eyes. The idea is drawn from 



THE BINDING OF SATAN. 



67 



that ; and the apostle says, just as on the palaestra or the 
arena the wrestlers fought, and the spectators gazed upon 
them, and watched with interest the issue of the conflict, 
so we on this earth are surrounded by an innumerable 
cloud of witnesses, who look down upon us, and feel an 
interest in us, and watch the issue of that grand battle of 
which they are the spectators, in which immortal souls are 
the combatants, where also Christ looks, and yearns to see 
the travail of his soul and be satisfied. It seems to me, 
therefore, if this be the fact, that there is no degradation 
in coming down to earth ; for where Christ is there heaven 
is ; for heaven is less a geographical locality, and more a 
special presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. I can see, 
therefore, no loss in their happiness, no degradation incurred, 
no descent from dignity, in their accompanying him when 
he comes, and constituting with him that beautiful and 
glorious bride clad in white robes, without spot, or blemish, 
or wrinkle, or any such thing ; when before the universe 
of stars, and all their countless tenantry, he shall present 
her to himself, and bid the universe see from what a depth 
of woe, from what a taint of character, his precious blood 
has washed her, what inveterate stains it has expunged, 
and to what a glory redeeming love has raised its chosen, 
its happy, and its beloved objects. Nor is this scene pe- 
culiar to this passage ; for we read in one of the most 
touching passages of Scripture : 11 For the Lord himself 
shall descend from heaven." If it be no degradation to 
the Master to descend, why should it be thought degrada- 
tion for the servants to descend with him? " For the 
Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, and 
the dead in Christ shall rise first ; then we which are alive 
and remain shall be caught up together with them in the 



68 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



clouds, to meet the Lord in the air ; and so shall we be 
for ever with the Lord." 

It has been objected, in the next place, that there is no 
evidence that Christ is here personally present. I have 
said, in giving the second solution of the chapter, that 
there is reason to believe that the millennium is not the 
sunshine preceding the sunrise, but the sunshine that fol- 
lows the sunrise : in other words, that the day does not 
introduce the sun, but that the sun's rising introduces the 
day ; that the thousand years are not forethrown light 
followed by Christ's appearance, but the light is reflected 
from Christ's personal presence. Everybody believes that 
the Lord will come to this world ; everybody believes that 
he will come again ; every one that repeats the Creed, 
every one that reads his Bible. If there be a dispute, if 
it is worthy of the name of dispute, when it is really no 
dispute, but a difference, it is, does he come at the com- 
mencement or does he come at the close of what are called 
the thousand years ? We can prove from Scripture that 
when he does come his arrival will be followed by all the 
events that are predicated of it, as enumerated in the pres- 
ent chapter. For instance, it is stated in Colossians iii. 3 : 
" When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall 
ye also appear with him in glory." Does not that look 
very much like, u And they live'd and reigned with him? " 
We read in 1 Peter i. 7 : M That the trial of your faith 
might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the ap- 
pearing of Jesus Christ." We find in 1 John iii. 2; 
" When he shall appear we shall be like him ; for we shall 
see him as he is." It is constantly predicted that when he 
comes he will not find the earth covered with the glory of 
a millennium, but " will there be faith upon the earth ? " 



THE BINDING OF SATAN. 



69 



In the il last days men shall be lovers of themselves ; " 
and " as it was in the days of Noah, men were eating, 
drinking, marrying, giving in marriage, so will it be when 
the Son of man cometh." Were he to come at the close 
of the millennium these predictions would not be applica- 
ble. Therefore it appears to me that instead of coming 
to a world that shall be overspread with the peace and 
beauty of a millennial sunshine, he will come to a world 
disturbed, demoralized, and absorbed in material cares — 
contemptuously asking where is the promise of his coming, 
without a thought about the soul, religion, or a world to 
come. We are told that when he appears he will come to 
judgment ; that his presence as Judge is personal ; but in 
this chapter you will find that, without a single additional 
remark about any subsequent appearing, he ascends the 
great white throne, and the books are opened, and judg- 
ment is pronounced ; in short, a fair and impartial reader 
must come to the conclusion that he is personally present 
at the beginning of the scene ; and that in the end of the 
chapter and at the close of the scene he merely assumes 
another attitude on the same level, not descends from a 
higher, and makes himself manifest in the midst of the 
world. 

I think it highly probable that the angel who lays hold 
on Satan and binds him is none else but the Lord Jesus 
Christ. I need not remind you that he is called by Mal- 
achi " the messenger ; " and the word messenger " is 
simply the translation of the Hebrew Melek, or the Greek 
ayyeXo$. which we translate 11 angel." I am not sure that 
our translation is always accurate in this rendering ; the 
strict meaning is "a messenger;" that messenger, of 
course, according to the passage a spiritual or disembodied 



70 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



one, but not necessarily an angel strictly and technically 
so called. This angel, the angel of the covenant, the mes- 
senger of the covenant in all probability is the Lord Jesus ; 
and when we read that he takes Satan and binds him, and 
shuts him up, we are reminded of his own words, that he who 
binds the strong man and spoils his goods is the stronger than 
he, the Lord Jesus Christ ; we are reminded also of his own 
words, that he has the key of death and of the grave ; it is he 
who opens the pit, and binds Satan and casts him in, where 
he is shut up for a thousand years. The events recorded 
in this chapter are preceded by fearful scenes, great wars, 
the destruction of Babylon, and the consumption of thou- 
sands of the hosts of evil ; but here we have the rainbow 
that succeeds the storm, the sunshine that breaks out after 
the fearful hurricanes that have wasted and swept the 
earth. We have in this chapter, in short, the midsummer 
of the world ; that beautiful and peaceful June day of a 
thousand years when the sunshine flows into each bay of 
earth like a quiet, gentle stream ; sleeps upon the roof 
of every homestead ; and all nature takes a long breath 
after the weary struggle of 6000 years during which she 
has groaned and travailed, waiting for the manifestation 
of the sons of God. There are various passages that 
seem to justify strongly this identification of the angel 
with the Lord Jesus. For instance, Peter asked the ques- 
tion, " Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee ; 
what shall we have ? " Now what does he answer ? Jesus 
answered : " Verily I say unto you, that ye which have 
followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of 
man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit 
upon twelve thrones." Compare this with these words: 
" And they lived and reigned, and sat on thrones." Here 



THE BINDING OF SATAN. 



71 



we have the picture reproduced in apocalyptic history 
which Jesus predicted in Matthew xix. 28. We turn to 
another passage, which casts light upon it, Acts iii. 19 : 
" Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins 
may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall 
come from the presence of the Lord ; and he shall send 
Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you ; whom 
the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of 
all things." These times are initiated in this chapter ; 
and therefore Christ's presence here we might reasonably 
expect. Again, in Jude 14, we read : " Behold, the Lord 
cometh with ten thousand of his saints;" and "them 
that sleep in Christ," says Paul, "will Christ bring with 
him;" " to execute judgment upon all ; and to convince 
all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly 
deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their 
hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against 
him." All these passages clearly imply the personal 
presence of Christ to inaugurate this new and more glori- 
ous dispensation, when the dead in Christ shall be quick- 
ened, and the living in Christ shall be changed, and both 
shall reign with him on earth for a thousand years. 

Having given these prefatory remarks, we naturally 
ask, is there the record of a literal transaction in the first 
part of the chapter, where it is said, " And I saw an an- 
gel come down from heaven, having the key of the bot- 
tomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid 
hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil 
and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him 
into the bottomless pit ; " — is this to be a literal and ac- 
tual occurrence ? Why should it not be so ? I cannot 
agree with those who always evaporate into metaphor what 



72 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



there seems to be a little difficulty in accepting as fact. 
This system has been pursued by Dr. Williams, in the 
second Essay in a volume very notorious, in which he has 
rarefied every doctrine of Christianity into myth, finding 
in the Bible not facts but figures, and metaphors, and ori- 
entalisms. I hold that we ought to take the words of 
Scripture as literal unless there be valid and conclusive 
reasons against our doing so. Is Satan here literally laid 
hold on ? In the first place, Satan is not a myth ; he is a 
person, an individuality, a real living power ; the archangel 
not shorn of his strength, and how great that strength may 
be we know not — nor shorn of his wisdom, and how vast 
that wisdom may be we faintly apprehend ; but deprived 
of his holiness ; wielding his wisdom and his power to en- 
snare, deceive, and destroy all he can draw within his 
reach. We have no adequate idea of Satan's power, and 
we do not sufficiently bear in mind this most awful fact, 
and it is a very awful one, that a spirit of gigantic energy, 
of vast wisdom, of inexhaustible resources, is moving upon 
the earth, entering our homes, our Parliament, our courts 
of justice, and our gaols; and what is ten thousand times 
worse, entering our hearts, and there leaving shadows that 
we cannot scatter ; kindling sparks that light up passions 
we would willingly quench ; creating doubts that we ab- 
hor ; and sending through our hearts thoughts, imagina- 
tions, and influences that we have no sympathy with, and 
over which we must mourn as the irresistible proofs that 
Satan is not yet bound, but still deceiving the nations of 
the earth. But what is the evidence that this is a literal 
transaction ? Let me quote language almost identical. In 
Matthew xiv. 3, I read: a Herod had laid hold on John, 
and bound him, and put him in prison." So we read in 



THE BINDING OF SATAN. 



73 



this very passage that the angel lavs hold on Satan, and 
binds him, and casts him into the bottomless pit. And as 
if to show how identical the facts are, the Greek words in 
Matthew xiv. 3, translated " he laid hold on," "he bound 
and cast into the pit." are the same as found here. But 
the treatment of John was a literal fact ;" John was seized, 
John was bound, John was cast into prison. Why should 
I suppose that the same language applied to Satan, a per- 
son, not a myth, should not be strictly and literally inter- 
preted in the same way ? Turn to another part of the 
same book, and you find in the Apocalypse, the 9th chap- 
ter, at the 14th verse : " Loose the four angels which are 
bound in the great river Euphrates." Here first they 
have been restrained; next a command goes forth that 
they are to be loosed. I find the words applied to them 
also applied to Satan ; he is bound, restrained, at the end 
of the thousand years he is loosed, as we shall afterwards 
see, and goes out to deceive the nations again. I take it, 
therefore, that a personal being, Satan, is literally bound 
and cast into the bottomless pit, and there tormented for 
a thousand years. But let us look in the light of other 
Scripture -at the word translated here " the bottomless 
pit;" it is literally " the abyss." We find very similar 
language used in* the 20th chapter, at the 10th verse: 
" The devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of 
fire and brimstone ; and again : " Whosoever was not 
found written in the Lamb's book of life was cast into the 
lake of fire." Perhaps the bottomless pit is not the same 
as the lake of fire ; for it is literally translated " the 
abyss ; " but he was cast into it ; and so earth was rid of 
his presence. Then it is added : "And set a seal upon 
him." Is this a literal transaction ? Is there anything 



74 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



to illustrate it in actual history? In Daniel vi. 16: 
" Then the king commanded, and they brought Daniel, 
and cast him into the den of lions. And a stone was 
brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den; and the 
king sealed it with his own signet." That was a literal 
transaction, a strict historical proceeding ; why should I 
not understand the same word used on this occasion to de- 
note the same thing, and this also to be a strict and histor- 
ical transaction? We read also in the Gospel of the cast- 
ing of the spirit out of the demoniac — that was a literal 
fact; and we read of the spirits entering into the abyss — 
that was a literal fact ; and as if fallen spirits in the days 
of our Lord anticipated the judgment that is spoken of in 
this chapter of the Apocalypse, we read in Luke viii. 31 ; 
" And the evil spirits besought Christ that he would not 
command them to go into the abyss ; ' ' the same word, the 
bottomless pit ; and they cried out, "Art thou come to 
torment us before the time?" The bottomless pit into 
which they were to be cast is that into which their chief 
archangel, Satan, was to be cast ; they knew that such was 
their doom ; but they knew that that doom would not over- 
take them till the clawn of the millennial era ; and there- 
fore they asked, with terrible dismay, " Art thou come 
here to torment us before the time ? " the time fixed by 
the Father from before the beginning of the world. We 
understand, therefore, that this binding and expulsion of 
Satan is a literal casting him out of this world. The 
change that follows will be transcendently glorious. Sup- 
pose sin were not cast out ; suppose that our individual 
sins were not extinguished — and I am not asserting 
that they will not — the very fact that Satan, with his 
brood of fallen spirits, is cast out, must be such a relief to 



THE BINDING OF SATAN. 



75 



this world, such a release to its people, that I can see one 
half of millennial blessedness accomplished in the casting 
out of him with whom we have so long and so desperately 
warred; who " goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking 
whom he may devour," who " deceiveth the nations," and 
tormenteth them that dwell upon the face of the earth. 

Before I conclude this portion of the chapter, let me 
show you by a parallel which has been given by a very ex- 
cellent minister in Scotland, the Rev. Horatio Bonar, how 
every clause in this chapter harmonizes with a distinct 
text in the New Testament. He draws a line down the 
middle of the page of his book, and puts upon the one 
side a clause in this chapter, and upon the other side 
a text in the New Testament. In the first place — 



" I saw an angel come down 
from heaven." 



2d. "Having the key of 
the abyss." 

3d. ' ' With a great chain 
in his hand." 



4th. "He laid hold on the 
dragon, that old serpent, and 
bound him a thousand years." 

5th. " And cast him into 
the bottomless pit." 



6th. " And shut him up, 
and set a seal upon him." 



Matthew xiv. 41. " The Son 
of man shall send forth his 
angels, and they shall gather 
out of his kingdom all things 
that offend." 

Rev. i. 18. "I have the 
keys of hell and of death." 

Jude 6. " The angels which 
kept not their first estate, but 
left their own habitation, he 
hath reserved in everlasting 
chains under darkness unto the 
judgment of the great day." 

Mark hi. 27. "No man 
can enter into a strong man's 
house, except he will first bind 
the strong man." 

Luke viii. 31. " And 
they besought him that he 
would not command them to 
go into the bottomless pit." 

Isaiah xxiv. 21. " The 
Lord shall punish the host of 



* 



76 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



. 7th. " That he should de- 
ceive the nations no more." 

8th. " After that he must 
be loosed a little season. 

9th. " I saw thrones." 

10th. " They sat upon 
them." 



11th. " Judgment was giv- 
en unto them." 



12th. " I saw the souls of 
them that were beheaded for 
the witness of Jesus, and for 
the word of God." 

13th. " They lived." 



14th. " And they reigned 
with Christ a thousand years." 



the high ones that are on high, 
and the kings of the earth up- 
on the earth. And they shall 
be gathered together, as pris- 
oners are gathered in the pit, 
and shall be shut up in the 
prison." 

Romans xvi. 20. " The 
God of peace shall bruise Sa- 
tan under your feet shortly." ' 

Isaiah xxiv. 22. u After 
many days shall they be vis- 
ited." 

Daniel vii. 9. "I beheld 
till the thrones were cast down." 

Matthew xix. 28. "Ye 
which have followed me, in 
the regeneration when the Son 
of man shall sit in the throne 
of his glory, ye also shall sit 
upon twelve thrones, judging 
the twelve tribes of Israel." 

1 Corinthians vi. 2, 3. " Do 
ye not know that the saints 
shall judge the world ? Know 
ye not that we shall judge an- 
gels?" 

Rev. vi. 9. " I saw under 
the altar the souls of them that 
were slain for the word of God, 
and for the testimony which 
they held." 

1 Corinthians xv. 22. " In 
Christ shall all be made alive." 
Isaiah xxvi. 19. " Thy dead 
men shall live." 

2 Timothy ii. 12. " If we 
suffer, we shall also reign with 
him." Rev. v. 10. "We 
shall reign on the earth." Rev. 
xxii. 5. " They shall reign 
for ever and ever." 



THE BINDING OF SATAN. 



77 



15th. " The rest of the dead 
lived not again until the thou- 
sand years were finished. 

16. " This is the first resur- 
rection." 

17th. " Blessed and holy 
is he that hath part in the first 
resurrection. 

Lastly. " On such the se- 
cond death hath no power." 



Isaiah xxvi. 14. " They are 
dead, they shall not live ; they 
are deceased, they shall not 
rise." 

Luke xiv. 14. " Thou shalt 
be recompensed at the resur- 
rection of the just." 

John v. 29. "They that 
have done good shall come 
forth unto the resurrection of 
life." 

Rev. ii. 11. "He that over- 
cometh shall not be hurt of the 
second death." 41 They which 
shall be accounted worthy to 
obtain that world, and the re- 
surrection from the dead, shall 
not die any more." 



Thus, if we take the whole of this chapter, and set it 
like a beautiful gem in the centre of surrounding gems, 
we shall find they all cast light on it, and that it casts light 
on them. 

Then let us comfort our hearts with this blessed hope, 
that the devil is not to have the mastery ; that evil is not 
to triumph ; that Satan is a usurper now, and shall be 
cast out an exile then ; that the Saviour has left us not to 
forget us, but having engraved our names upon his heart, 
and upon the palms of his hands, he will come for his 
bride, that has been crying for so many hundreds of years, 
11 Come, Lord Jesus ; take to thee thy power ; come 
quickly; " and he will answer, " Behold, I come ; " and 
" the dead in Christ shall rise, and the living in Christ 
shall be changed ; " and 11 Thou shalt be mine in that day 
when I make up my jewels; " and all nations shall bless 
him, and all shall be blessed in him ; and the whole earth 
shall be filled with his glory. 



78 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



LECTURE V. 

They that sleep in Christ and they that are found alive 
in Christ at his coming shall, the former rejoin their bodies 
raised from the grave, and the latter experience a com- 
plete transfiguration. 

" I saw thrones and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto 
them ; and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the wit- 
ness of Jesus," &c. — Revelation xx. 4, 5. 

I produced in the course of previous remarks the key to 
the solution of the majestic and sublime chapter from 
which I have taken the subject of this lecture. I will now 
comment upon that blessed prospect — that true Easter 
morning, when there shall take place not the resurrection 
of a few, as when Christ rose from the dead, but the re- 
surrection of all that sleep in the dust who have died in 
Christ, and in hope of the glory that he has promised soon 
and sure to be revealed. Before I advance further, let 
me explain the peculiar imagery here employed. He says : 
" I saw thrones, and they sat upon them ; " that is, I saw 
fulfilled what God himself has promised by the lips, or 
rather by the pen, of his servant the prophet Daniel. 
Daniel predicts what John in this chapter records as tak- 



THE FIRST RESURRECTION. 



79 



ing place at the commencement of that millennial epoch 
to which all past ages have contributed, and in whose glo- 
ry and splendor all past times shall be crowned and glori- 
fied. Daniel says in the 7th chapter, at the 9th verse : 
" I beheld till the thrones were cast down ; " so John says 
here : " I saw thrones ; " u and" continues Daniel, " the 
Ancient of days," that is, the Saviour, " did sit, whose 
garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like 
the pure wool ; his throne was like the fiery flame, and 
his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and 
came forth from before him ; thousand thousands minis- 
tered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood 
before him ; the judgment was set, and the books were 
opened. I beheld them because of the voice of the great 
words which the horn spake ; I beheld even till the beast 
was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burn- 
ing flame. As concerning the rest of the beasts, they had 
their dominion taken away ; yet their lives were prolong- 
ed for a season and time. I saw in the night visions, and 
behold, one like «," not the, but a, "like a Son of man 
came with the clouds of heaven ; " as in the prediction in 
the 24th chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew : 
" The Son of man shall come in the clouds of heaven; " 
" and they brought him near before him. And there was 
given him," what is recorded in this very passage, u do- 
minion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, 
and languages should serve him ; his dominion is an ever- 
lasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his king- 
dom that which shall not be destroyed." John saw in the 
distant vision of the future, that passed before him like a 
splendid panorama, across the Isle of Patmos and over the 
iEgean Sea, the accomplishment of what Daniel predict- 



80 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



ed ; namely, the thrones set, and they sat upon them, and 
judgment was given unto them. What a sublime finale to 
the chequered story of human joys and human sorrows ! 
They that were persecuted and reproached of men at last 
accepted and acquitted of God — they that were miscon- 
strued on earth, and suffered because of the misconstruc- 
tion, now glorified and honored by being placed at the 
right hand of God — thrones set for them who had known 
only crosses; joy ministered to the hearts of them that 
had rarely bounded, and frequently been breaking — dig- 
nity the inheritance of those who had been degraded ; 
saints judging the world — men judging angels — all 
things restored, the glory returned, the church perfect, 
the bride complete ; heaven, the continent of glory, and 
earth, the long-broken-off-island, reunited, and made one 
blessed dwelling-place for ever and for ever. Such is the 
picture here sketched. 

What is worth notice, and what perhaps explains some 
misapprehensions of the passage, occurs in these words : 
" I saw thrones, and they sat upon them." Who are the 
they? In this sentence, " I saw the souls of them," the 
words / saw are not in the original ; they are in our 
version in italics, and I need not add that is proof there 
is no original expression for it. The verse runs : "I saw 
thrones, and they; " the question is, who are the they? 
" they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto 
them ; " and in the van of this glorious phalanx, in the 
forefront of this noble army, were the souls of them that 
were beheaded for the witness of Jesus. Who are the 
they? Just that same "they" that runs like a silver 
thread through the whole story of the Apocalypse. You 
will find the first mention of the they, if I may use so 



THE FIRST RESURRECTION. 



81 



strange an expression, in the 7th chapter of this book : 
" What are these which are arrayed in white robes, and 
whence came they?" And what is the answer ? Here 
is the definition of the they : — " These are they which 
came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, 
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. There- 
fore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day 
and night in his temple." After this read the 4th verse : 
" And I saw thrones, and they" the same they, " sat 
upon them." If we want, again, another explanation of 
the they, let us turn to the 11th chapter, at the 15th 
verse : " And the seventh angel sounded; and there were 
great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world 
are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ ; 
and he shall reign for ever and ever. And the four and 
twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell 
upon their faces, and worshipped God, saying, We give 
thee thanks, Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, 
and art to come ; because thou hast taken to thee thy 
great power, and hast reigned. And the nations were 
angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, 
that they should be judged." Read also the sequel of the 
20th chapter, and you hear the fulfilment of the last echoes 
of the seventh trumpet : " and that thou shouldest give 
reward unto thy servants;" here is the they ; "the 
prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, 
small and great : and shouldest destroy them which de- 
stroy the earth." This is another picture of the they i 
who sat upon thrones. We have the last sketch of the 
same bright and happy group in the 14th chapter of Rev- 
elation, at the 1st verse, the very reading of which is 
almost like a strain from heaven: " And I looked, and, 



82 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him" — 
here are the they — t: and with him an hundred and forty and 
four thousand, having his Father's name written in their 
foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice 
of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder ; and 
I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps ; 
and they sung as it were a new song before the throne, 
and before the four beasts, and the elders ; and no man 
could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four 
thousand ; " because that song was thanksgiving for spirit- 
ual things, which are foolishness to all besides ; " but the 
hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeem- 
ed from the earth. These are they which follow the Lamb 
whithersoever he goeth. These" — the same they — 
" these were redeemed from among men, being the first 
fruits unto God and to the Lamb. And in their mouth 
was found no guile ; for they are without fault before the 
throne of God." Here you have the picture of the very 
same they that sit upon thrones ; that suffered, many of 
them, for their faithfulness to Christ, and that constitute 
what are called in the concrete throughout the Apocalypse 
the bride of the Lamb. She has emerged from the perse- 
cutions, the sorrows, the obscurities, of the world; she 
has laid aside her weeds of widowhood, she has put on her 
bridal garments, her Easter robes ; and now she hears the 
beautiful, and exquisitely poetical, but though poetical not 
less true, language of David in the 45th Psalm : " Hark- 
en, daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear, forget 
also thine own people, and thy Father's house : so shall 
the king greatly desire thy beauty : for he is thy Lord ; 
and worship thou him. And the daughter of Tyre shall 
be there with a gift \ even the rich among the people shall 



THE FIRST RESURRECTION. 



83 



entreat thy favor. The king's daughter " — now here is 
the picture of the they, of the bride — 11 the king's daugh- 
ter is all glorious within ; " not by external or gorgeous 
architectural magnificence, not by ritual, or artistic cere- 
monies and rites ; but morally and spiritually inlaid with 
that exquisite mosaic, the graces that compose the Chris- 
tian character and have their birth in the Christian heart. 
" The king's daughter is all glorious within; her clothing 
is of wrought gold. She shall be brought unto the king 
in raiment of needlework; the virgins her companions" 
— the ten virgins, five wise, five foolish — " that follow 
her shall be brought unto thee. With gladness and re- 
joicing shall they be brought ; they shall enter into the 
king's palace," that is, Christ the King. " Instead of 
thy fathers shall be thy children^ whom thou mayest make 
princes in all the earth. I will make thy name to be re- 
membered in all generations ; therefore shall the people 
praise thee for ever and ever." 

Thus we have before us that holy and glorious group 
constantly delineated in the Apocalypse, in contrast to 
those who have apostatized from the truth, and received 
the mark of the great apostacy of the earth. This church, 
this bride, this company of living Christians, is traced 
from the days of Paul through the catacombs of Rome, 
where their memorials still survive — through the dens 
and caves of the earth, where their remains are still treas- 
ured in the hope of the resurrection morn — along the dens, 
and rocks, and recesses of the Alps — in Smithfield — on 
the gray moors of Scotland — wherever the truth has been 
preached and a martyr for it has suffered — there this 
bright continuity of Christian witnesses, this true aposto- 
lical succession, has constantly appeared, till at last they 



84 



•THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



culminate in the glory of the millennial day, occupying 
thrones ; having suffered with Christ they also reign with 
him and rejoice a thousand years, until the vestibule of a 
thousand years is merged in the grand temple of eternity ; 
and past, and present, and future, are lost in the splendors 
of one illuminated, everlasting, and glorious now. Such 
are they. 

But what is meant by the expression, " I saw the souls 
of them that were beheaded? " The obvious exegesis of 
the text is this : John describes, first of all, the whole 
body ; they, the bride, the whole company of believers ; 
but, struck with the exceeding splendor and magnificence 
of the van, he adds, And I saw in the forefront of these, 
in the van of this great army of the living God, those that 
had been beheaded ; those that had wrestled with super- 
stition ; those that had protested against the dominant er- 
ror ; those who had suffered because they would suffer 
rather than sacrifice to them that were no gods ; these oc- 
cupied the van, more resplendent, but not more worthy, 
than those that were behind them, that sat upon thrones, 
and were glorified also with Christ. I have already ex- 
plained that soul is constantly employed in Scripture in 
the sense of individual. For instance, Nineveh, in which 
are so many souls ; Abraham, and the souls that have 
come with him ; meaning the individuals. Of course, if 
these were souls, spiritually and strictly so called, it is not 
probable he could see them ; as far as we know, our pres- 
ent definition of the spirit of man is that it is invisible ; 
and the very statement there of John that he saw them is 
evidence that they were not disembodied spirits, but souls 
in their resurrection robes, raised from the dead, throned 
in glory, resplendent in a light that is never shaded, and 



THE FIRST RESURRECTION. 



85 



clothed in garments that never perish. They occupied the 
foremost ranks ; the noble army of martyrs, the goodly 
fellowship of the prophets, the glorious company of the 
apostles, were in the front rank of the church throughout 
all the world that doth acknowledge and serve the Lord 
Jesus Christ. 

It is stated here that " this is the first resurrection ; " 
it is called here the first resurrection. The resurrection 
from the dead is the distinguishing tenet of Christianity 
itself ; and I am persuaded that whilst Christians justly 
look for the glorification of the soul, and rejoice in that 
blessed hope, they do not sufficiently realize the equally 
certain and glorious hope that this very dust now formed 
fearfully and wonderfully, one day to be decomposed and 
disintegrated in the grave, shall just as surely as the soul 
attains its glory, experience its resurrection change, and be 
recomposed, and glorified, and lighted up with all the 
splendors of heaven ; preserving its identity, and yet leav- 
ing behind it all the traces of infirmity, mortality, and de- 
cay. To show how important is the resurrection, and 
what a space it occupies in the teaching of the minis- 
ters of Christ and in the Word of God, we find that in 
the early teachings of the apostles it was the dominant 
theme. For instance, in the room of Judas " must one be 
ordained to be," what? " to be a witness of his resurrec- 
tion." Again, the charge against Peter and John in the 
temple was, " That they taught the people, and preached 
through Jesus the resurrection from the dead." Again, 
it is said concerning the apostles : " With great power gave 
the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus." 
At Athens, the metropolis of the world, the university of 
Europe, the seat of all that was aesthetic in philosophy, 



86 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



art, literature, poetry, music, architecture, science, the 
charge against the apostle was, what proves it had been 
his main theme, that " he seemed to be a setter forth of 
strange gods, because he preached unto them Jesus, and the 
resurrection." Again, we read that when Paul was ac- 
cused he said : " Concerning the resurrection of the 
dead I am called in question." And when he wrote to the 
Corinthians, so important did he regard this truth that he 
said : "If Christ be not risen from the dead, then is 
your faith vain, and our preaching is vain, and ye are yet 
in your sins." Then if we turn back to ancient days,, 
what do we find ? Abraham understood the resurrection 
from the dead ; for he accounted that God was able to 
raise even Isaac from the dead. Again, Joseph believed 
in the resurrection of the dead ; if not, why did he give 
commandment concerning his bones, how they should be 
taken, and where they should be buried ? Job on his east- 
ern plains saw along the vista of many hundred years the 
resurrection from the dead, and as he beheld the glorious 
spectacle, he burst into language half prophecy, half poet- 
ry, but entirely truth: " I know that my Redeemer liv- 
eth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the 
earth ; and though after my skin worms destroy this 
body, yet " — scoff as you like, philosopher ; despise it 
and denounce it, Athenian and Sadducee — " yet," saith 
this patriarch, with a faith, and hope, and earnestness 
that you do not know, "in my flesh shall I see God." 
Isaiah knew of this same great truth ; for what did he say ? 
" Thy dead men shall live with my dead body ; " " the 
earth shall send forth her dead." David, the sweet psalm- 
ist of Israel, believed it ; for did he not sing : " Thou 
wilt not leave my soul in hades" that is, separate from 



THE FIRST RESURRECTION. 



87 



the body ; ' 1 neither shall thine Holy One see corruption ? ' ' 
The apostle Paul, speaking of the martyrs that preceded 
him and passed into glory, says : " Others were tortured, 
not accepting deliverance ; " why ? " that they might ob- 
tain a better resurrection ; " he is speaking of Abel, and 
of Moses, and of Abraham, and of Joseph. And what a 
suggestive thought is this, that the archangel wrestled, we 
are told in the Epistle of Jude, about the body of Moses ! 
it is stated in the Epistle of Jude : " Yet Michael the 
archangel, when contending with the devil, he disputed 
about the body of Moses." This strikes me as suggestive 
of a blessed thought ; over the sleeping dust of the leader 
of the hosts of Israel, buried in the unknown recess of some 
mountain fastness in the desert, the archangel watched, 
lest Satan should disturb it, or in any way interfere with 
what was redeemed with the same precious blood with which 
the soul of Moses was redeemed. And if this was so, 
may it not be true that angels in shining groups are watch- 
ing by these green sods ? that the armies, the marshalled 
armies of the skies, are looking after the sleeping dust of 
Christians upon the earth ? We are so prone to think of 
the soul — and we cannot think too deeply or too feeling- 
ly about its destiny — that we forget that every atom of 
our dust is redeemed with the same precious blood with 
which every faculty of our souls and every affection of 
our hearts have been redeemed long ago ; and it may be 
that the same angel spirits that minister to us, the living 
heirs of salvation, have the charge of that clay which 
waits for the first burst of the resurrection morn and the 
first roll of the archangel's trumpet, when this mortal 
shall put on immortality, this corruptible incorruptibili- 
ty ; and on that grave where triumphed, the ransomed, re- 



88 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



stored, resuscitated, rebuilt frame of mortality shall give 
utterance to the triumphant, the almost sarcastic song, " 
death, where is now thy sting? grave, where is now 
thy victory ? Thanks be to God, who giveth us the vic- 
tory through Jesus Christ our Lord." Such are some of 
the constant allusions to that glorious truth, the resurrec- 
tion from the dead. The immortality of the soul was the 
almost universal conviction of heathendom ; it is so obvi- 
ous a fact that, like the existence of God, it never was en- 
tirely expunged from human hearts ; but the resurrection 
of the body is the peculiar and distinctive doctrine of 
Christianity ; and I fear as Christians we do not think of 
it frequently enough, or sufficiently rejoice in the blessed 
prospect which it holds forth. 

The resurrection is divided into two parts. All Chris- 
tians believe there is to be a resurrection of the just and 
of the unjust ; but all Christians do not agree in the or- 
der of it ; and therefore where we differ we must agree 
to differ ; looking each into his Bible, and forming what 
seems to him to be the true and just estimate of what is 
stated there. I believe that when Christ comes, and at the 
dawn of the resurrection day, all the sleeping dead of six 
thousand years who loved the Saviour and died in him shall 
be raised from the dead ; and that the dead who have re- 
jected and despised him will not be raised till the thou- 
sand years are finished. This is the strict, plain, and his- 
torical account in the very chapter on which I am now 
commenting. John says here : " This is the first resur- 
rection ; " and then what does he add? " But the rest 
of the dead;'' what rest? All the glorified, the elect, 
the justified, the sanctified, the saved, lived, and sat on 
thrones, and judgment was given them, and they lived and 



THE FIRST RESURRECTION. 



89 



reigned with Christ a thousand years; but "the rest of 
the dead,'' that is, those who are not the justified, who 
are not the ransomed, who are not the chosen, lived not 
till the thousand years were finished. There are thus 
two acts in the resurrection. Of one he says : " This is 
the first resurrection from the dead." If there be a re- 
surrection at all, it cannot be expressed in language more 
definite, more clear, or more suggestive of the literality 
of the event. He says of this resurrection : " This is 
the resurrection;" 44 that first one." So emphatic are 
the words in the original that nothing can possibly be more 
so. Now if the second resurrection be literal, the first 
must be literal also. If you speak of two things, this is 
the first, and this is the second, you mean, they differ 
numerically, but they must be -the same materially. If 
he says of the first, " This is the first resurrection," then 
if the second resurrection be literal, the first must be lit- 
eral: if the first be figurative, the second must be figura- 
tive, and so there is no resurrection at all, and Job's 
hope was vain, and Abraham's expectancy was vain, and 
the hope of all that have fallen asleep in Christ is vain 
also. Both are literal or both are figurative ; you cannot 
make the one metaphorical and the other material. They 
are numerically distinguished; but in substance and in na- 
ture they must be thoroughly and entirely the same. But 
does Scripture justify such a distinction? I answer, it 
does unquestionably. Throughout the whole New Testa- 
ment — if we turn to all the passages in the New Testa- 
ment that relate to the resurrection of the dead — we 
shall find the distinction studiously*, and designedly, and 
sharply kept up. For instance, in Luke xiv. 14 : " Thou 
shall be recompensed at the resurrection of the just;" 



90 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



not at the resurrection, but "at the resurrection of the 
just." Again, in Luke xx. 35 : " They which shall be 
accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrec- 
tion from the dead ; " the words in the original are : " that 
resurrection, that one;" "they that shall be thought 
worthy to obtain that resurrection, that first one," to 
which John refers as the preface to the millennial glory, 
" neither marry, nor are given in marriage." In that 
magnificent record of the resurrection which sounds almost 
like a trumpet peal, the 15th chapter of the 1st Epistle 
to the Corinthians, we have the order equally clearly ex- 
plained ; " For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall 
all be made alive. But every man in his own order; 
Christ the first fruits ; " he rose eighteen hundred years 
ago; then what is next afterwards? "they that are 
Christ's at his coming ; " that is the next event, which in- 
cludes all believers. " Then cometh the end, when he 
shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the 
Father ; when he shall have put down all rule and all 
authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath 
put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall 
be destroyed is death." In that beautiful passage in 
1 Thessalonians iv. we read : " For this we say unto you 
by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and re- 
main unto the coming of the Lord shall not precede them 
which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend 
from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, 
and with the trump of God ; and the dead in Christ shall 
rise first ; then we which are alive and remain shall be 
caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the 
Lord in the air ; and so shall we ever be with the Lord." 
Then says the apostle Paul, in another passage equally 



THE FIRST RESURRECTION. 



91 



suggestive of the same thought, Philippians iii. 11 : il If 
by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the 
dead." What did the apostle mean by that? If it be 
true that all that are in their gra ves shall hear the voice 
of the Son of man, and shall come forth, what could the 
apostle mean by saying that if by any means he might at- 
tain unto the resurrection from the dead ? The answer is 
found in the original of his words ; they are, literally 
rendered " the resurrection out of, from amongst the dead." 
In other words, the apostle Paul wished that he might 
attain, if by any means he could, to that distinct resurrec- 
tion which John in this chapter speaks of as " the first re- 
surrection from the dead." And it is very remarkable that 
among the writers of the earliest days, Justin Martyr, who 
must have almost conversed with the evangelist John, cer- 
tainly with those who conversed with him — not that I would 
attach inspired virtue to any such nearness to an apostle ; 
but that he must have known what was the dominant, be- 
lief on this passage at that day — in his dialogue with 
Trypho the Jew, a most interesting and instructive dia- 
logue, showing that Christ is the Messiah, and what is the 
belief and what are the hopes of Christians, written before 
the year 140, probably twenty years after John the Evan- 
gelist and writer of the Book of Revelation was dead, 
says : u I, and all Christians who are in all respects ortho- 
dox, know that there will be a resurrection of the flesh, 
and a thousand years' reign ; and Jerusalem will be re- 
built, enlarged, and beautified." Such was the impres- 
sion of one of the earliest writers after the evangelist John. 
And what a glorious and a blessed prospect it will be ! 
the glorious company of the apostles, the goodly fellow- 
ship of the prophets, the noble army of martyrs, starting 



92 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



from their graves, glistening like the dew upon the grass, 
radiant and beautiful as the stars in the sky ; constituting 
together a glorious church, without spot or blemish, or any 
such thing ! Some shall come from the precincts of the 
Inquisition, from the dungeons of Spain, where so many 
suffered and were silent, and passed away, because they 
would not give up the blessed hope of the Gospel of 
Christ ; some shall rise from the caves of Italy, from the 
snow-drifts of the Cottian Alps, where their bones, in the 
language of Milton, are still bleaching in the rains and 
winds of heaven ; a glorious group, shining in all the 
splendors of an immortality that shall know no interrup- 
tion and experience no decay. Some shall come forth 
from the village church -yard, the green sod rolling aside 
to let them rise ; and the rude forefathers of the hamlet, 
that have slept for a thousand years, shall meet the buried 
dead of the catacombs and of the Cottian Alps, and join 
together in the worship of God and of the Lamb. The 
great ocean, that sepulchre of buried nations, shall hear 
quivering through its deepest depths the accents of the Son 
of man ; and rising from the desert and the silent sea — 
what a spectacle ! — shall be myriads of ransomed, re- 
deemed, and glorified ones, who shall meet the rise of that 
Sun that will never set, and join with those that preceded 
them, and enter into rest, and sit on thrones, and live and 
reign with Christ a thousand years. Austerlitz. Jena, 
Waterloo, Magenta, Balaklava, Inkermann, shall all throw 
up their buried dead ; and every atom of their dust, 
quickened by the breath of Christ, the Resurrection and 
the Life, shall feel instinct with immortality ; bone shall 
come to bone, and they shall live and reign with Christ a 
thousand years. " This is the first resurrection." Bless- 



THE FIRST RESURRECTION. 



93 



ed thought ; glorious prospect ; worthy of Christianity to 
proclaim ; meet hope for the heart of every one who has 
a freehold in a grave, if he have not a foothold anywhere 
else ! Blessed thought ; glorious hope ; thy brother, thy 
sister, thy father, thy mother, shall rise again ! 

This great truth, the resurrection from the dead, was 
constantly taught by the preachers of Christianity. It 
is not a fantasy, it is not a dream. I am afraid that we 
lose half the hope and joy of the glory of heaven by 
etherealizing it ; and no less the hope and joy of the fu- 
ture by losing all impression of it as something that we 
can see, taste, handle, hear, and feel really happy. Hence 
the reconstruction of the fallen shrine of mortality is the 
constant hope of Christians. The future is not the ex- 
tinction of the body, but its perfection, its glory, and its 
reconsecration. When the resurrection comes, I shall not 
be turned into an angel, but I shall be raised a living, re- 
sponsible man. We shall not be evaporated into some- 
thing transcendental, ethereal, inappreciable ; but we shall 
be raised with all our living, unextinguished identities, and 
features, and tastes, and temperament, just as we have 
them now, sin only eliminated, and imperfection dropped 
as a mortal robe in the grave from which we rise. Christ 
died for man, not for angels ; Christ rose and ascended 
into heaven the first fruits, not of angels, but of them that 
slept. He made the body, and eternity will show that 
Christ has lost nothing that he himself made. The fu- 
ture is not, I repeat, an ethereal, impalpable, impondera- 
ble, metaphysical thing, of which we can form no concep- 
tion, but a new, bright heaven above ; a new, beautiful 
earth below ; an enveloping, holy, happy, brilliant, joy- 
ous atmosphere around us. They that are there shall re- 



94 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



tain glorified humanity ; that humanity represented in 
Christ, the first fruits of them that slept. It is men that 
die ; it is men that are raised from the dead. My body is 
not something that does not belong to me ; separate from 
my body I am not a man. Man is soul and body ; angel 
is spirit alone ; if I am not redeemed as a man I am not 
redeemed at all. It is men that sinned ; it is men that 
are forgiven ; it is men that die ; it is men that are raised, 
soul and body and spirit ; glorified, immortal, in happiness 
and bliss for ever and ever. Whatever disease has touch- 
ed, whatever death has wrestled with, whatever taint of 
infirmity, imperfection, and decay the fall has left on me, 
shall all be eliminated and swept away ; and I shall re- 
cognize the members of my flock, and they will recognize 
me ; and they will remember that I told them these bless- 
ed truths ; and all will then feel as they do not feel now, 
what a precious cross, what a blessed Saviour, what a glo- 
rious ransom, what a magnificent creed is Christianity ! 
how worthy of being illustrated while we live, and sealed 
if needs be by our death ! that blessed religion that has 
taught us the immortality of the soul, and its ransom 
also ; the resurrection of the body, and its identity also ; 
all that marks you and me, sin, imperfection, whatever 
the fall has bequeathed excepted, shall be restored. God 
did not make our headaches and our heartaches, and our 
gray hairs, and the crow's feet about the eye, and decay, 
and deformity, and infirmity ; these were all the heritage 
of sin. Well, all these things will be made a present of 
to the Devil ; the Devil shall have for his own all that he 
accomplished upon earth ; and God shall have for his all 
that he made, and all that Jesus redeemed by his precious 
blood. And therefore those looks of light, and loveliness, 



THE FIRST RESURRECTION. 



95 



and beauty, that glowed in the countenance of Eve when 
she came from the plastic hand of her God ; and that still 
linger, as if reluctant to depart, on the countenances of 
her fairest daughters, shall all be reproduced in sharper, 
more beautiful, and brilliant relief. Those gleams of 
thought that, like the waves from the sea. spring up from 
the depths and fountains of the inner life; those deep 
feelings for w T hich w r e can find no language ; those flashes 
of celestial light that rise from the depth w T e cannot fath- 
om or exhaust ; those distinctions, those lights and shad- 
ows, all that Adam recognized in his Eve the Second 
Adam shall recognize in his bride, and perpetuate and fix 
indelible and glorious for ever and ever. I have no wish, 
I have not the least wish to be an angel : I wish to be a 
glorified man. I do not want another body ; I shall be 
content with the one I have, if God will only remove 
from it all that are the tokens of infirmity and of decay ; 
and blessed be his name, he has promised me and you not 
another body, but the purification of this ; not a re- 
creation, but a resurrection of that which has been laid 
down. And hence the very faces that wept on earth I 
shall recognize radiant with sunshine in heaven ; those 
very nerves that tingled with agony on earth shall vibrate 
w T ith ecstacy and happiness there ; those very tones of voice 
which raised a melancholy minor upon earth shall sing 
the anthem peal of Moses and the Lamb. It is that which 
sleeps that the trumpet stirs ; it is that which the grave 
has received that the resurrection brings forth ; it is the 
prospect of a resurrection, not of a new creation, that is 
before me. Hence the Christian's sleep is everlasting re- 
freshment ; hence the Christian's spirit at this moment, 
happy up to the measure of its capacity, yet keeps its 



96 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



vigils probably over the green sod where its other half is 
laid, and waits and yearns for that glorious day ; and 
watches and looks if it can see one gleam of the resurrec- 
tion morn breaking upon the grave, and giving token that 
death shall be swallowed up in victory, and the grave shall 
give forth its trophies, and the last enemy shall be de- 
stroyed, that is, death. And the Great Watchman of 
Israel, He that sleepeth not nor slumbereth — be assured 
of this — is watching over our dead, is taking care of 
every atom of their dust ; and sees with an omniscient 
eye that never closes ; and watches with an omnipresence 
that cannot be deceived : and waits, in the exercise of an 
omnipotence that cannot be balked, for that day, the bur- 
den of a thousand promises, the object of countless proph- 
ecies, when this mortal shall put on immortality, and the 
crypts of time shall give way to the sunshine and the 
splendor of the cathedral of eternity ; and we shall sit 
on thrones, and judgment shall be given us, and we shall 
be assessors with Christ. This is, and it is worthy of the 
name, that resurrection, that first one. 



THE HOLY AND HAPPY LOT. 



97 



v 



LECTURE VL 

THE HOLY AND HAPPY LOT. 

Blessings track a believer's steps on earth. Blessings 
hover over his dead dust like a rainbow. Blessings bright 
as sunshine on a summer day go with him for ever. 

" Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection." — 
Revelation xx. 6. 

In the first lecture upon this chapter I showed that during 
the thousand years inaugurated by the era that is here 
mentioned, Satan, who has deceived the nations of the 
earth, and is the inspirer of the worst depravity by which 
the human race is branded, will be laid hold of by the 
stronger man than he, cast into the abyss, restrained for a 
thousand years, so that he shall not during that long era 
go forth to deceive the nations or to delude mankind. And 
we read that when this event takes place, and Christ him- 
self shall be revealed, that he shall appear in the midst of 
his ransomed church, fulfilling the prophecy that the sons 
of God shall be manifested ; fulfilling his own prediction 
that he will present his church, the company of believers, 
the bride, to himself, a glorious church, without spot or 
blemish. And he saw thrones : u Ye that have been with 
5 



93 



THE GKEAT CONSUMMATION. 



me shall in the regeneration sit upon thrones, judging the 
twelve tribes of Israel." "And they sat upon them." 
Who are they? They are not mentioned in the passage 
that immediately precedes ; but they are obviously 'the 
they we read of so frequently in the Apocalypse : " These 
are they that have washed their robes, and made them 
white in the blood of the Lamb ; " they are they that are 
faithful, and chosen, that appear on Mount Zion with the 
Lamb, and cast their crowns before him, and worship him 
perpetually. These sit upon thrones ; judgment is given 
unto them ; and then he says, in the van of this white- 
robed and glorious group ; in the very forefront of this 
magnificent assembly — assembly such as earth never bore 
and heaven never before saw — I beheld them that were 
beheaded for the witness of Jesus ; that is, the martyrs — 
those who had not worshipped the great apostacy that has 
deceived the nations of the earth, nor received its mark, 
then and there raised from the dead. They who have 
slept since the days of Adam and Eve, buried under the 
shadow of the walls of Paradise ; and from the days of 
Abraham and Sarah, buried under the oaks of Mamre ; 
those who are immured in the catacombs of Rome, in the 
hollows and in the dens and caves of the Alps ; under 
Smithfield ; in the grey moors of Scotland ; all that nobly 
lived, and faithfully and trustingly died, shall hear the roll 
of the last trump. And what a gathering will then be ! 
the great rocks will split ; monuments of bronze will be 
rent in twain ; the marble of a thousand years will crack ; 
the green sods will turn aside ; battle-fields, from Mara- 
thon and Thermopylae down to Waterloo, and Solferino, and 
Magenta, shall give up their dead ; and the great ocean, 
the mighty grave in which such myriads are entombed, with 



THE HOLY AND HAPPY LOT. 



99 



only the noise of its waves for their ceaseless requiem, it 
too shall give up its dead ; and they shall reign in glory, 
in beauty, in happiness with Christ for a thousand years ; 
that thousand years the vestibule before the permanent 
temple of eternal blessedness and happiness on earth. I 
showed that all this is to be actualized not in a distant orb, 
but on this very earth of ours. I think it is altogether a 
false spirituality that some seem to attach to the Scripture 
who think, Well, this earth is so bad that the devil had 
better have it for ever ; and it is so corrupt, and so vile — 
and there is a great deal of course in it that is so — that 
it is not worth retaining. There is nothing that God has 
made that shall not be purified and perpetuated in glory 
and beauty for ever. I do not believe that Satan will have 
a single spoil that is the product of his own wiles ; and 
that the lost that shall be with him will be, as I have often 
said, suicides, lost because they would not be saved ; with 
Satan because they would not be with Christ. There is 
nothing, then, we have reason to believe, that God made 
that Satan shall have. At that day Christ shall have all 
that is his, and he shall have all the glory of it ; and at 
that day the devil shall get all that is his, and he shall 
have all the glory, if there be glory, of that. Whatever 
Satan has introduced, Satan shall have ; but whatever 
God has made and Christ has redeemed, shall be purified, 
and made beautiful, and ennobled with a greater glory 
than that which it originally had. It is a very delightful 
thought now that this old familiar earth, that has so often 
groaned and travailed in pain, seeking to be delivered from 
wounds it has not deserved, but which its children have 
inflicted on it ; this earth ever mourning that it is made 
the ceaseless burial-place of its children : shall one day 



100 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



feel the breath, and hear the accents, and be touched by 
the consecrating footstep of the Prince of Peace ; and 
when it is restored and regenerated, when all sin is elim- 
inated from it, when all the progeny of sin are driven 
from it for ever, I do not believe that there will be a planet 
in the sky or an orb of God's making that will be half so 
beautiful as this regenerated earth. There is not an orb 
in the shining sky that is above — and there are millions 
vastly greater than the earth we dwell on — there is no 
world amidst the starry hosts, the mere sentinels and out- 
posts of which are all that we can see upon the plains of 
infinitude, that has in it a Calvary, a Gethsemane, a Mount 
Tabor, a Mount of Olives ; there is not one earth of which 
it can be said, Jesus drank of its waters, ate of its bread, 
breathed its air, and its soil was trod by his crucified but 
sacred feet. And therefore this earth has antecedents, 
historic associations, blessed reminiscences, that will make 
it the loveliest, and the most interesting, and the most 
beautiful of all the orbs of the sky ; and I thank God 
that I was born, not in Jupiter, nor in Saturn, nor in Mars, 
nor in some unfallen orb, but in this fallen, but redeemed, 
and one day to be regenerated earth. 

There is a special blessing pronounced here upon those 
who have part in the first resurrection. I showed in the 
course of my previous remarks that there is a twofold act 
in the same great historic event, the resurrection ; that it 
is irresistibly proved from Scripture that at the com- 
mencement of the thousand years, when Christ returns, 
all the dead in Christ — that is, all dead Christians — 
shall all be raised, and all living Christians then found 
shall be changed ; but the rest of the dead, we are told, 
lived not till the thousand years were finished ; and then 



THE HOLY AND HAPPY LOT. 



101 



we shall find, as I will show you in a subsequent lecture, 
that they were raised, and who they were. Now, if it be 
true that they who are raised at the end of the thousand 
years means they were literally raised from the dead, 
then the first resurrection must mean a literal resurrec- 
tion too. Either the first resurrection is literal and the 
second is literal, or if the first be figurative the second 
must be figurative, and there is no resurrection at all. 
But an interval of a thousand years will elapse between 
the two. 

I wish now to ascertain in what sense they can be said 
to be blessed who share in this first resurrection. I must 
however add one or two remarks which corroborate what 
I said in the previous lecture, the certainty and literality 
of the resurrection from the dead. For instance, we are 
told in one part : " What ; know ye not that your bodies 
are the temples of the Holy Ghost ? " not your souls on- 
ly, but your bodies ; and those bodies, consecrated by the 
residence of the Holy Spirit of God, will be raised again 
in incorruptibility and immortality. Again, the apostle 
Paul, comparing Christ's relation to his people to the 
marriage relation, says, speaking of Christ and the bride, 
"They two shall be one flesh." But every Christian is a 
member of Christ ; we are knit to him by ties and bands 
indissoluble as eternity itself ; and if he has risen, as the 
head, we too shall rise and reign with him in glory. Now 
if we be temples of the Holy Ghost, how can we perish ? 
The Temple of Solomon has passed away like a vision ; 
the more majestic second Temple of Herod is in ruins, or 
rather is the foundation of the Mosque of Omar ; but 
that temple which the Holy Ghost has chosen and conse- 
crated for his residence may be disintegrated, but it can 



102 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



never be annihilated ; every atom of its dust rests in 
Christ, just as every faculty of our minds and every af- 
fection of our hearts is knit to him, never any more to be 
separated from him. As sure as Jesus rose — and no 
fact is more certain — so sure your dead shall rise too. 
The hand that you grasped in affection you shall hold 
again ; the eye that looked on you with its look of sym- 
pathy and love shall look on you again ; the very tones 
of voice that once were familiar to your ear shall be re- 
produced in all their beautiful and affectionate vibrations ; 
the very footsteps that you recognized as the footsteps of 
your nearest and your dearest you shall recognize again. 
Identity, recognition, are in my mind as vital elements as 
the resurrection itself in the Word of God. * 

Now then the apostle says, or rather he that inspired 
the apostle says : " Blessed and holy," or as it might be 
rendered, " Holy and happy is he that hath part in the 
first resurrection." Read the 5th chapter of St Mat- 
thew's Gospel, and you will there find that all the beati- 
tudes are pronounced on character. " Blessed are the 
pure in heart ; blessed are the peacemakers ; blessed are 
the poor in spirit;" why? Because in this world an 
inner satisfaction is the only compensation that we have 
for outer trouble ; the sunshine within lightens the black 
night that is without ; a spring of living water in the 
Christian's heart freshens the Christian's life, and com- 
forts him in the heat and conflict of Christian warfare. 
But in that state into which we shall be introduced, and 
in which we shall be specially blessed, the inner joy and 
the outer condition will be the same. In this life the 
lines of nature and the lines of grace cross each other ; in 
that most happy and blessed state the lines of nature and 



THE HOLY AND HAPPY LOT. 103 

the lines of grace shall run parallel with each other ; and 
we shall not only have sunshine within, but sunshine with- 
out ; not only a spring of happiness in the heart, but we 
shall be led to living fountains of waters, and Christ shall 
wipe away all tears from all eyes. At present many a 
grace nestles in a Christian's heart that is frostbitten the 
instant it shows itself outside ; but in that better and • 
brighter dispensation the air will repress nothing ; the 
sweet sunshine will woo every Christian blossom ; and all 
brightness and all blessedness without, and all happiness 
and all holiness within, they shall indeed be blessed and 
happy that have part in " that resurrection, the first one." 

This blessedness and happiness may probably consist in 
this, that they will then recognise the fulfilment of what 
Daniel speaks of in words on which I have commented be- 
fore : " Blessed is he that watcheth, and waiteth, and 
cometh to the thousand three hundred and thirty-five 
days." They feel the era predicted by Daniel is come • 
the world's weary six thousand years, they will say, are 
now all exhausted ; the thousand years of blessedness, and 
holiness, and happiness are begun ; and they will feel at 
that hour as we do not feel now that heaven and earth 
have passed away ; and a new heaven, not another heav- 
en ; and a new earth, not another earth, have occupied 
their place ; but not one jot has dropped from a promise, 
not one letter has fallen from a prophecy, but all has been 
more than gloriously realized and fulfilled. Another rea- 
son perhaps of this blessedness may be and indeed must be 
this — that in that resurrection the body, long severed 
from the soul, shall be restored and reunited to it again. 
We are not angels ; we are men. The definition of an 
angel is spirit alone ; the definition of a brute is the body 



104 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



alone ; the definition of rational, responsible, redeemed man 
is soul and body. And those spirits that are now in glo- 
ry, that state which is a stratum above where we now are, 
are not yet perfected in all their happiness. Your dead 
that are with Christ are happy up to the full measure of 
their capacity ; but their happiness will be multiplied and 
magnified when the dust they dropped, as Elijah dropped 
his mantle when he ascended to the sky, shall be reconse- 
crated and rebuilt ; and the long separated twain shall be 
one ; and the body shall be the meet shrine for the glori- 
fied, happy, and the rejoicing spirit. This body is our 
companion ; it is associated with our joys and our sorrows, 
our tears and our smiles : our sunny days and our sad 
ones are all connected with this machine, this framework, 
this companion, this part of myself, which we call the 
body ; we should not like to part with it eternally ; it 
would be a widowhood indeed if it were severed from us 
for ever ; we should be raised as angels, but we should 
not be raised as men. But our Elder Brother is in heav- 
en, wherever it may now be; with the marks of the 
wounds on his hands and the reminiscences of Calvary 
about his brow. Our dust has taken possession of heav- 
en ; he has preceded us, a portion of our flesh, the earn- 
est and the pledge that all earth and we that sleep in it 
shall be redeemed and resuscitated also, and so be for 
ever with the Lord. It must therefore be an augmenta- 
tion of the happiness of the redeemed that the body is re- 
stored to them. It will be indeed their intensest happi- 
ness that they shall see Christ as he is. " We shall be 
like him, for we shall see him as he is." We are told in 
this very book that John beheld in the midst of the throne 
a Lamb as if he had been slain. If Christians now say 



THE HOLT AND HAPPY LOT. 



105 



— and many a Christian can say — " Whom haying not 
seen we love ; " — how marvellous that we can love one who 
is never seen ! " Whom having not seen we love ; in whom 
though now we see him not. yet believing we rejoice 
with joy unspeakable and full of glory " — if we can say 
so now. what shall be our joy, how intense, how full of 
glory, when we shall no longer believe in the unseen, but 
shall see the King in his beauty, and the land that is now 
far off ! Each star that he holds in his hand shall shine 
with unprecedented lustre : each precious stone redeemed 
by his blood and engraven by his name shall reflect his 
brightness for ever and for ever. We shall no more see, 
as we are obliged and pained to see now, through a glass 
darkly. As we cannot look at the sun at noonday through 
a lens unless it be smoked, or colored, or dimmed, so we 
could not as we now are gaze upon the glory of Him, the 
first flash of whose splendor struck Paul to the ground on 
his journey to Damascus. But a time comes when our 
spiritual sight shall be so strengthened and our bodily vis- 
ion shall be so improved that we shall no more see through 
a glass darkly ; the problems of this dispensation will be 
the axioms of that ; and the obscurities and the difficulties 
of to-day shall be lost in the brightness and in the glory 
of to-morrow, and we shall know and see even as we are 
known, It is a wrong thought to suppose that heaven, or 
to use a phrase perhaps more strictly scriptural, the future 
state, is simply ceaseless worship, I mean in its outward 
expression. I believe that in that future state all those 
dim discoveries that science now makes we shall see fully ; 
and we shall be amazed as we look back that the loftiest 
philosopher on earth was ever proud, and we shall see 
how little the most gifted of mankind now knows — how 



106 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



little reason there is for the most learned to be puffed up, 
and we shall discover secrets, and mysteries, and glories 
latent in the universe which will only lead us more to 
Him who made them all, and redeemed them all by his 
blood, while we worship Him as the Lamb slain from the 
foundation of the world. 

Another source of happiness in that first resurrection 
will be that the body thus raised will be no more a clog, 
or an impediment in the way of what we would do and 
what we desire to accomplish in that happy and blessed 
economy. At present, we often find while we read God's 
word that distracting thoughts dim the eye that reads and 
touch the heart that beats. How often do you feel weary 
and exhausted when the mind is unweary and unexhaust- 
ed ; how often do you feel the body to be a weight, instead 
of being, as it will then be, a wing in your soaring worship 
before the throne. Nay, do we not feel what an apostle 
experienced, a law in our body warring against the law of 
our spirit; so that when we would do good, evil is present 
with us ; and the good that we would, from weakness we 
do not ; and the evil that we would not, from weakness we 
clo ; and we are constrained to cry in this imperfect econo- 
my, " Oh wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me 
from this body of death ? " Are we not in such circum- 
stances — and I speak to the depths of every Christian's 
experience when I thus speak — tempted to yearn for the 
blessedness and happiness of him who shall share in that 
first and great resurrection ? Then that law in our mem- 
bers will be extinguished ; then the diverging tendencies will 
all be put an end to ; then the body will be in harmony 
with the mind. At present the heart, the soul, and the 
body, are like two instruments out of tune ; they are not 



THE HOLY AND HAPPY LOT. 



107 



in harmony; neither in unison nor in harmony. But in 
that day they will be retuned, and man will be in perfect 
harmony with himself and others ; and we shall find that 
as men we are capable of greater things and grander things 
than angels ; and that this body, which by reason of sin, 
and death, and corruption, and mortality, and decay, is 
now a drag, will then facilitate and help us in executing a'll 
the behests that Christ lays upon us, and in rendering 
that worship of which it is sard, " They serve him day 
and night" — needing no sleep, because there is no 
fatigue ; needing no refreshment, because there is no ex- 
haustion ; or, as it is said in another place, in seeming 
contradiction, but full of beautiful truth : " They rest, 
and yet they rest not day nor night ; " the combination 
of rest and activity constituting together the worship, the 
true worship of the child of God. 

In that happy state, too, the body shall no more suffer. 
No cheek shall be the channel of tears there ; no tremb- 
ling hand shall hold the bitter cup reluctantly to the lips ; 
no Shunammite woman as she gazes upon the pale face of 
her dead infant shall say, while her heart breaks, " It is 
well." Orphans shall not weep then; no widows shall be 
there ; all tears shall be wiped away. No brow shall be 
wreathed with thorns ; the cypress shall give place to the 
palm. " Blessed and happy is he that hath part in this 
first resurrection." 

We shall then have more than a compensation for all 
that we have suffered upon earth ; and therefore we are 
cheered to suffer patiently now seeing we shall be recom- 
pensed eternally. If needs be you are perhaps in mani- 
fold tribulations, but when you stand upon the margin of 
this ransomed and renovated earth, when in bodies shining 



108 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



with the splendors of immortality, no longer drags and 
dead weights, but instinct with impulse and energy, you 
will look back upon all the way you came ; and the most 
afflicted of us all will then not only be constrained, but 
will be glad to say — Our light affliction, which we felt so 
heavy and which we thought so long, has worked out for 
us a far more exceeding, even an eternal weight of glory ; 
and what the apostle says in the 8th of Romans, and what 
we feel so imperfectly now — I reckon that this present 
suffering, I reckon that that past suffering, was not worthy 
to be compared with the glory which has been revealed. 
Then we shall hear the address, "Come, ye blessed ; " 
and the instant we hear these words, pains will cease to 
rack, and sickness will cease to waste ; they that have 
risen and reign with Christ have met there to part no 
more ; there will be no graves, no death, no sickness, no 
sorrow ; this earth will be a beautiful, a holy, and a happy 
abode of perfect, and glorious, and happy, and holy men. 

It is a blessed thought to look forward to that day, that 
sure and certain day, when all the traces of battle-fields, 
those frightful scars upon the earth, shall be effaced for 
ever ; when graves, the furrows that are made by the 
ploughshare of death, shall be filled up for ever ; when 
the cries and groans of creation, mourning, and longing, 
and striving to be delivered, shall all cease ; when 
there shall be no night, the season of misunderstanding, 
of misapprehension, of uncertainty, and danger ; when 
the curse that, like a stain of ink upon the sensitive 
blotting-paper, has radiated over all the surface of nature, 
and struck down to its very heart, shall be exchanged for 
the blessing; when the glory of Lebanon shall be brought 
unto it ; when the lion and the lamb shall lie down to- 
gether ; when there shall be a thousand years of sabbath 



THE HOLY AND HAPPY LOT. 



109 



sweetness, sabbath blessedness, sabbath joy, without sab- 
bath clouds, or sabbath interruptions, or sabbath weariness 
or fatigue; when there shall be the recognition of all that 
we have known on earth ! I look upon it as one of the 
brightest hopes of Christianity that those we loved on 
earth, from whose lips dropped lessons of wisdom ; whose 
footprints upon the sands of time still shine with imper- 
ishable excellency ; we shall meet, and know, and recog- 
nize again. There is not a mother that has lost a babe 
that will not meet her babe and recognize it again in that 
pure, and beautiful, and holy light which never shall be 
shaded. Very sweetly does Longfellow sing of this very 
subject when he says : — 

" There is no flock, however watched and tended, 
But one dead lamb is there ; 
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, 
But hath one vacant chair. 

" The air is full of farewells to the dying, 
And mournings for the dead ; 
The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, 
Will not be comforted. 

" Let us be patient ; those severe afflictions 
Not from the ground arise ; 
Bat oftentimes celestial benedictions 
Assume this dark disguise. 

" We see but dimly through the mists and vapors, 
Amid these earthly damps ; 
What seem to us but sad funereal tapers 
May be heaven's distant lamps. 

" There is no death ; what seems so is transition ; 
This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 
Whose portal we call death." 



110 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



This shall be realized in all its blessedness and comfort 
then. I think it would take away half the charm of the 
future if we were to be in it like monks and nuns, shut 
up in stone and lonely cells ; a father, a brother, a sister, 
a babe, be near you, and yet you to be insensible to their 
presence, or ignorant it is the familiar and the once- 
beloved face. The promised future is not a series of cold, 
insulated cells; but our Father's house. c: In my Father's 
house are many," not cells, but " mansions." It is amid 
the warmth of his fireside that we shall gather ; it is under 
that roof-tree that never shall be broken that we shall 
meet ; and as sure as we gather round our Father's fire- 
side and beneath our Father's roof-tree, shall I recognize 
and know all my brothers and my sisters in Christ, when 
we sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the 
kingdom of our Father. 

Then surely holy and happy is he that hath part in this 
first resurrection. No thorn will be about the brow ; no 
moth will fret those shining and beautiful robes ; time will 
leave no snows upon the hair, and it will grave no wrinkles 
upon the brow. There will be no sere leaves then on 
earth, the bequests of preceding years, and there will be 
no dead leaves on the soil of thought, in the garden of the* 
heart, that we should not wish to be there ; all things 
shall be made new ; no frost shall nip the blossoms, and 
no shadow shall fall upon the sunshine ; and the years of 
eternity, like the hours on the sun-dial, will be measured 
by sunshine, and not by shadow. 

u Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first 
resurrection." Lord, may wb be numbered with these 
thy saints in glory everlasting, for Christ's sake ! Amen. 



REIGNING PRIESTS. 



Ill 



LECTURE VII. 

REIGNING PRIESTS. 

Glory follows glory as we read the future of the sons of 
God. So brilliant a destiny should animate our fainting 
hearts, and strengthen our feeble knees as heirs of God, 
for — 

" On such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of 
God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years." — 
Revelation xx. 6. 

I have explained the blessedness — and it is a great bless- 
edness — of those who have part in this first resurrection. 
I know that if I speak to mere secular, and worldly, and 
unthoughtful minds on these subjects, it gives them matter 
only of infinite merriment; they will only deride or sneer 
at it. But you may rest assured that what God has 
thought it right to inspire, that ambassador is unworthy 
of the name who thinks it not right to try to teach and 
explain. The mission of a minister of Christ is not that 
of a person who is to please the taste, gratify the appetite, 
indulge the notions, of a world that is thoughtless ; but 
of one who has to speak the truth, and the whole truth, as 
that truth is unfolded from the first verse of Genesis to 
the last verse of the Apocalypse. And I am sure that 



112 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



Christian minds, I not only think and hope, but I know, 
weary with the toils of the week, fretted with its disap- 
pointments, and sick of its troubles, its aches, and its sor- 
rows, rejoice to get a glimpse of heaven's sweet sunshine 
amidst the shadows of the present ; to sip a little from the 
fountain of living waters on the plains of this world's 
parched and fevered desert ; and surely, surely, if Chris- 
tianity be not simply a directory for man's walk, but as we 
believe and are persuaded it is, a shower of blessings, a 
burst of sunshine, to make men not simply holier, but to 
leave them happier in this present world ; then I feel that 
in ministering to the happiness of men I am serving God as 
much as when I minister to their holiness. I have ever tried 
to teach and to persuade, and I am sure I am right, that this 
blessed religion of ours makes men happy ; and I have 
tried to adduce and to bring forth from the page of sacred 
writ those grand truths that are fitted to waken in the 
heart's strings music, the very music of the skies ; and 
in trying to make men happier, and in the consciousness 
that some are made happier, I feel my reward in my work, 
and am encouraged to persist in teaching those grand les- 
sons, in impressing those bright hopes, in gathering those 
handfuls of sunshine in order to make you happy in this 
world as well as holy. When I think that we address on 
Sundays hundreds who are toiling all the week from early 
in the morning to late at night, who hear ceaselessly the 
sound of pence, and shillings, and pounds ; who are strug- 
gling to make ends meet, and have a difficulty in doing it ; 
who are disappointed here, and balked there, and cheated 
elsewhere ; and worried, and vexed, and tormented, and 
troubled for six days ; let us shut the door on the world's 
troubles on that beautiful day, the queen of the days of 



REIGNING PRIESTS. 



113 



the week, the Christian sabbath ; and let us look into the 
sunshine, and try to hear unspent celestial music ; and to 
meditate together upon themes that will strengthen us to 
go into the valley of the week, having been on the sunny 
mount, the Tabor of the Sabbath, in communion with 
Christ and with all that bear the name of Christ Jesus. 

It is, then, a blessed thought if you and I shall be num- 
bered in the first resurrection, for the second death shall 
have no power over us. What is this second death ? 
What does it mean ? When God told Adam the conse- 
quence of his sin he said : ■* In the day thou eatest there- 
of," literally, " Dying thou shalt die." Every one has 
understood that to mean death in its most comprehensive 
shape : and its comprehensive shape is threefold : death 
physical, death moral, death eternal. In its physical 
shape I need not try to teach its certainty ; the young, the 
good, the beautiful, die daily. The long procession of the 
dying began at the gates of Paradise lost, and it will go 
on dark and gloomy till the gates open of Paradise re- 
turned and restored. Few families are without one sad 
reminiscence at Christmas eve ; few firesides are without 
one empty chair ; but, glorious thought ! those memories 
of yours, that like picture-galleries have stored in them 
the paintings and likenesses of them that are gone, shall 
not surrender those likenesses until the originals return, 
and you shall see and know even as you are seen and 
known. The second death is in its first aspect what we 
all must experience, physical ; with this distinction, how- 
ever, that in the case of a Christian the venom of death 
is gone ; that is to say, he dies ; but he only changes the 
crypt for the cathedral ; this cold world for yon bright 
and beautiful one ; and death to him is not dying ; there 



114 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



is no penalty in his sufferings, but only chastisement; 
there is no curse in his death, but only transference ; for 
death in his case has lost its sting, and the grave is denud- 
ed of its victory. This death includes in the original sen- 
tence what we call spiritual death. What is spirit- 
ual death ? It is the soul living on the lower plane of 
this world, but insensible to the great things and the 
grand things of a higher. For instance, the man whose 
soul is spiritually dead is alive to literature, alive to pol- 
itics, alive to science, alive to all the questions and the 
criticisms of taste ; but his soul is so dead to the things 
of the higher world that if you speak to him about regen- 
eration, about the righteousness of Christ, about the 
atonement, about heaven or the resurrection, he will turn 
round to his neighbor and he will ask, " Doth he not speak 
parables ? " What does he mean ? He is a mystic, he is 
a transcendentalist ; we do not understand these things ; 
if he had told us not to pick pockets, or if he had told 
us not to defame our neighbor, we could have understood 
that ; but when he speaks of those things that belong to 
another realm, those higher truths that touch the inner 
part of Christianity, then all is mystery. Why ? Be- 
cause his soul is dead. Just as a man who is dead does 
not see, I mean as far as his body is concerned, the room 
in which his body lies, so a man whose soul ' is dead does 
not see the spiritual truths, the great lessons, the bright 
hopes, the blessed sympathies, the inner and upper world 
amid which he is placed in the church of Christ. We 
have evidence of this natural death being reversed, when 
Lnzarus rose from the dead, and multitudes rose with 
Christ ; and we have evidence of this spiritual death be- 
ing reversed in increasing thousands who are regenerated, 



REIGNING PRIESTS. 



115 



and translated from darkness into light, and from the pow- 
er of Satan into the power of God. There is, thirdly, as 
the last aspect of this second death, the suffering, or de- 
struction, if I may use the word, of soul and body in 
hell for ever. This is in its strictest and most absolute 
sense the second death. The body is not annihilated in 
the grave when it dies ; so the soul is not annihilated in 
the second death when it dies. Annihilation is not only 
an impossibility, but scientifically looked at it is an ab- 
surdity. Your body never can be annihilated, and so 
your soul never can be annihilated. Your body may be 
dissolved, and be disintegrated, and mixed up with a thou- 
sand forms, but there it is ; the soul may be spiritually 
dead, spiritually miserable, spiritually wretched, spiritual- 
ly unhappy, but annihilated the soul never, never can be. 
And all the language that is employed in Scripture to de- 
note this second death seems to me inexplicable, unless 
upon the assumption or admission, painful and awful as it 
is, that the souls of some — God forbid it may be any of 
us ! — shall suffer for ever and ever. What can I make 
of such words as these? I appeal to you : " Some shall 
go into outer darkness ; there shall be wailing and gnash- 
of teeth." What can I make of these words : " The Son 
of man shall send his angels, and they shall gather togeth- 
er all things that offend, and them that do iniquity, and 
shall cast them into outer darkness ? " I have often 
said, what I now repeat, that the only difficulty I feel in 
the Bible, and the only one that the old Adam sometimes 
strives and struggles against, is this — that when all shall 
be reclaimed, when this earth of ours shall be restored ; 
when the reign of beauty, of blessedness, of happiness, 
of sunshine, of joy, and of peace, shall overspread the 



116 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



universe like a glorious and an unfathomable ocean, there 
shall be somewhere — where I know not — a place in 
which shall be heard the wail of a ceaseless sorrow, and 
where shall be the victims of an inexhaustible calamity. 
My own feelings are so against it that I have striven — 
perhaps I have done wrong — to gather from the Bible 
that it is not true. I have read all that the Essayists have 
said, one of whom, Mr. Wilson, professes to deny it; I 
have read much that the Universalists of America have 
written in their best and most celebrated works, but I can- 
not get over what God in his word has said. I would reject 
it, I would refuse it, I would disbelieve it, if I could ; but 
the God of patience, of mercy, and of love, who gave 
Christ to die for us, has settled it. I am a Protestant ; 
my creed, or my conviction, is not what my passions, or 
prejudices, or sympathies, or fallen nature prescribe, but 
what God has said ; for when He has spoken all controversy 
is forever settled. And therefore I must believe that when 
all shall be restored, when in the experience of those that 
reign with the Lamb, that sit on thrones, that share his 
greatness, that cast their crowns before him and worship 
him — when there shall be no more sickness, nor sorrow, 
nor tears, nor death -— somewhere there will be, invisible 
to us, a cloud amid the sunshine ; inaudible to us, a dis- 
cord in the universal harmony, a spot of sorrow and of 
woe, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quench- 
ed ; for the very same word that metes out the blessedness 
of the saved also metes out the misery of the lost. " These 
shall go away into everlasting life," aiuviov " and those 
shall go away into everlasting punishment j" not annihila- 
tion, but punishment. I am therefore driven to the con- 
clusion that this second death means exactly what I have 



REIGNING PRIESTS. 



117 



now stated, a state of ceaseless and inexhaustible punish- 
ment. But what is the use of ingenious men trying to 
dissolve in their own prepossession God's plain word ? 
There are gaols and prisons in England, but you need not 
go into them. Nobody, as you pass along Newgate 
Street, drives you into Newgate gaol ; nobody sends you 
to Bridewell ; you need not enter into any one of them. 
There they are ; they are for those that have fitted them- 
selves for them ; but you need not go there. Is it not 
much better to inculcate the holiness, the happiness, the 
privileges, the joys of integrity and honesty, than it is to try 
and teach that a cell in Newgate is not so narrow nor cramp- 
ed, and that Newgate has not so bad food, and that the gaol- 
ers are not so hard-hearted, and that the punishment of a 
prison is not so bad ? What is the use of this sort of 
teaching ? Is it not common sense to teach every man 
that you need not go there : you cannot go there against 
your own will ; and if you go there you go because you 
will, and no force, not even royalty itself, can send a man 
to prison who does not wilfully and deliberately do what 
entitles him to a cell within that prison ? So, with re- 
spect to teaching men that hell exhausts itself, and wears 
itself out, and that if you go there, there is sure to be an 
end of it, and therefore you need not be alarmed, nor care 
much about the matter ; what wretched theology is that ! 
Why, I would not escape hell from the fear of hell ; and 
I should not care about going to heaven simply to be re- 
warded for what I have done ; if the love of God be in 
my heart, the love of him who loved me, the love of him 
who gave Christ to die for me, the love of him who has 
inspired the Bible to teach me, the love of him who has 
lighted up heaven with all its splendor to receive me — 



118 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



that is my inducement to follow him, and to shrink in- 
stinctively and intuitively from all that is inconsistent with 
his will, his word, and the requirements of his law. But, 
if you be Christians, finally upon this head, on you the 
second death hath no power. We have nothing to do, 
therefore, with preaching about hell. I do not believe 
that any man is driven into heaven by being scared from 
going into hell ; I do not believe you will ever make a 
Christian by telling him about the torments of the dam- 
ned ; I do not think it is our mission to preach them ; we 
have nothing to do with them. If you are not made 
Christians by the overwhelming pressure of God's infinite 
love in the gift of Christ Jesus our Saviour, you will 
never be made Christians at all. There is no Christianity 
in any human heart that is not the product of the sight 
and appreciation of God's infinite love in the gift of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore, having noticed it be- 
cause it comes before me in this passage, I pass on from it, 
reminding you that if you accept the salvation freely 
offered, if you believe on the Saviour plainly set forth, not 
a spark of that fire can singe a hair of your heads: not an 
element of that second death can touch you ; not a worm 
in it can gnaw your happiness; not a moth in it can fret 
your peace ; you have nothing to do with it ; you are re- 
deemed, you are justified, you are sanctified : you are 
marching from grace to glory, and from the low levels of 
this world on which sin has laid you as wrecks to the high 
and sunny table-land where there is peace and blessedness 
for ever. The anxious thing I sometimes think of, and 
pardon me for adding it, is — whether when we find our- 
selves in glory and with Christ in millennial blessedness 
we shall miss any that we loved and took sweet counsel 



REIGNING PRIESTS. 



119 



with upon earth. If that be possible, that we shall miss 
them — and if we do not find them there we must miss 
them — would there not be a tear dropped upon the pave- 
ments of heaven ? would there not be an agony that would 
pierce even a happy and a bounding heart ? I cannot ex- 
plain it ; I leave it ; I know that heaven will be infinite 
happiness to the redeemed, and there will not be one tear, 
one sorrow, one distress , but how to meet the question I 
have suggested, or to solve the problem, God knows best ; 
I do not ; and therefore I will not attempt to do it. 

Then it is told us that those on whom the second death 
will have no power shall be priests, and shall reign with 
Christ a thousand years. Mark the two words, they shall 
reign, and they shall be priests ; or as it is rendered in 
another passage : £i Unto him that loved us, and washed 
us in his blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto 
God and unto Christ." Here is the dignity of those that 
enjoy that first resurrection ; they are, yes, you are, kings 
and priests now in disguise. The poorest beggar woman 
who is a Christian, the poorest old man who is a Christian, 
is a queen, and a king, and a priest unto our God and to 
his Christ. We are now the blood royal, but we are in 
disguise; in the language of Scripture, our life is hid with 
Christ in God. We can see the life and the dignity of 
those that occupy and tread the high and mighty places 
of the land in which we live ; but we cannot see, because 
it is spiritually discerned, the dignity — in reversion it 
may be, but substantially in possession it now is — of those 
that are kings and priests unto God. But at that day when 
they shall be raised again, and this mortal shall put on im- 
mortality, and they shall reign with Christ a thousand 
years, the cloud that envelopes them shall be dispersed, 



120 



THE GEEAT CONSUMMATION. 



the darkness that overshadows them shall be dissolved ; in 
the language of the Gospel, the sons of God shall be 
made manifest ; the bride shall emerge from the low, and 
dark, and damp place where her sojourning has been for 
many thousand years, and put on her bridal raiment, her 
coronation robes, and shine as the brightness of the sun 
and as the stars for ever and ever. They shall appear at 
that day, all God's kings and all God's priests, with a 
splendor and in a glory in comparison of which the royalty 
of Alexander the Macedonian and the magnificence of Na- 
poleon shall be but a spangle on a noble's robe. All 
shall pale and sink into insignificance beside that grandeur 
of which you, poor people — you, despised and down- 
trodden ones ; you, in this world destitute, but in the hopes 
of that world rich — shall be partakers and heirs for ever 
and ever. And when these kings shall appear, too, theirs, 
will be crowns that shall not fade, theirs shall be sceptres 
that shall not be broken. They will not be, like poor 
Louis Phillippe, citizen kings put up by the mob, and 
pulled down by the mob when its passions change ; they 
will be kings and priests unto our God and to his Christ. 
All that is beautiful in aspect, all that is precious in its 
intrinsic nature, all that is quickening and joyous, shall 
be theirs in that house not made with hands eternal in the 
heavens. That Christians are now kings is plain ; for does 
not Peter say? " Ye " speaking to poor, persecuted, 
depressed Christians scattered "throughout the world, "ye 
are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood." What is a 
royal priesthood? Kings and priests. So that Chris- 
tians, whilst they will be in the first resurrection manifest- 
ed as such, are in this economy not manifested, but really 
and truly such: Ye are kings and priests. But if you 



REIGNING PRIESTS. 



121 



be kings unto our God, you must have a retinue ; royalty 
has its retinue. You do not see it ; I do not see it ; but just 
as the servant of Elijah saw nothing till his master opened 
his eyes, and then he saw shining troops of chariots and of 
horses that were encamped round about him ; so if we had 
the spiritual vision we should see angels and archangels, 
and the spirits of the just made perfect, encompassing us, 
and interested in us ; watching over the issues of a con- 
flict on which two eternities depend. Michael the archan- 
gel disputed with the devil about the body of Moses. It 
strikes me as a just inference from this, that angels not 
only minister to Christians now, but that they watch over 
and take care of their dead dust. And if our eyes were 
opened by a higher than Elijah, and if we saw as Elijah's 
servant was enabled to see, ever as we entered what the 
Germans call very beautifully u God's acre," that is, the 
cemetery, the burial-place of the dead, we should see troops 
of shining angels watching over every green sod, waiting 
and looking towards the sunrise, if they can catch the 
gleams of the approaching resurrection sunshine ; listen- 
ing perhaps if they can hear the first trumpet tones of the 
resurrection morn ; and, oh beautiful thought ! oh com- 
forting impression for those who have the dust of their 
loved ones sleeping in many a churchyard ! watching over 
that dead dust ; and were Satan to come and try to seize 
it as his own, Michael the archangel is there to resist him. 
I often feel that there may be conflicts between higher 
powers in our present world, far more gigantic and mo- 
mentous than we in our material notions are sometimes 
disposed to admit. We may be in the midst of grander 
spectators, we may be the subjects of eyes and of an in- 
spection more penetrating than we sometimes are disposed 



122 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



to think. And perhaps as this dispensation draws nearer 
to the first resurrection, the veil will be withdrawn ; the 
partition wall will become thinner ; and we may hear the 
voices and see the flash of the splendor of a higher, a 
brighter, and a nobler world ; and by the earnest and the 
foretaste feel that the millennial rest is not a dream, nor 
a fantasy, as some silly and stupid writers that do not un- 
derstand it sometimes teach, but a blessed hope, a glorious 
expectation, a quickening theme, worthy of ministers 
preaching and of people listening to. We shall be kings ; 
we shall reign with Christ. 

But it is added, we shall also be priests. What does 
this mean ? What is a priest ? The important practical 
lesson I cannot too frequently inculcate, that the humblest 
Christian is as much a priest as the Pope of Rome or the 
Archbishop of Canterbury. The minister of the Gospel is 
nowhere called throughout the New Testament as an offi- 
cer a priest. I remember once having a discussion with a 
Roman Catholic priest, and I offered him five hundred 
pounds if he would only bring forward from the New Testa- 
ment one single text in which the minister of the Gospel, the 
ambassador of Christ, is called isyevg, a sacrificing priest ; 
and he admitted that the New Testament did not teach it ; 
but he said he had what was much better, tradition ; how- 
ever, as we do not think tradition much better, we are 
satisfied with the silence of the New Testament as evi- 
dence that no such officer is in existence. But, above all, 
how thankful we should be that we do not want such an 
officer ! Suppose there were such officers in existence as 
sacrificing priests, what are they to do ? We have no 
atoning sacrifice to offer ; it was finished 1800 years ago ; 
we have nothing for a sacrificing priest to do ; a sacrificing 



REIGNING PRIESTS. 123 

priest has no more to do in administering the communion 
than a colonel of a regiment or a captain of dragoons. 
We do not want such an officer, there is nothing for him 
to do : the man's office would be a sinecure, because the sac- 
rifice is finished and the pardon is offered ; and the 
Lord's Supper is the feast after the sacrifice, not the sac- 
rifice itself in any sense whatever. But then we are 
told that whilst the minister of the Gospel is not a priest 
m that sense, yet all Christians are priests ; "Ye are a 
royal priesthood; " £< Unto him that loved us, and washed 
us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings 
and priests unto God." Then what do we offer? Not an 
atoning sacrifice. All the tears that penitents can shed 
are no atonement ; all the pains and agonies that devotion 
can endure are no atonement. You are priests, my breth- 
ren, but you are not called upon to offer a sacrificial victim. 
Then what are you to offer ? The same book that tells 
us of the priesthood tells us what its offering is : " To do 
good and to communicate forget not, for with such sacri- 
fices " — now it is priests that offer sacrifices — "with 
such sacrifices God is well pleased." Again : "I beseech 
you by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies 
living sacrifices;" and again: " the sacrifice of praise 
and thanksgiving." In other words, we as Christian priests 
offer to God not atonement, but eucharistic sacrifices ; 
that is thanksgiving sacrifices. And thus as priests we 
offer up sacrifices. But if there be priests and sacrifices, 
there must be an altar. What is that altar ? for it is the 
altar that sanctifies the offering. What is that altar ? It 
is not a stone one, nor a brick one, nor a wooden one : "we 
have an altar of which they have no right to eat that serve 
the sanctuary ; Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, 



124 THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 

and for ever." Therefore when you retire from the house 
of God, and put a penny, or a shilling, or a pound in-the 
plate for the aged poor, you do a priestly act ; you lay it 
upon the altar, it is in the name of Christ you offer it ; 
be it a halfpenny, be it what you like, it is a priestly act ; 
you give it in Christ's name; or, translated into other 
words, you lay it upon the altar. When you do good, or 
visit the schools of the poor, when you minister to the 
needy, or give to missions, or aid the circulation of the 
Bible, you act as priests, and in doing these things you do 
priestly deeds. What a grandeur and sublimity does this 
give to the meanest offering that a Christian can present ! 
In that day, that day when the priest shall be manifested ; 
that day when the crown and the mitre shall be upon the 
same head ; when the sceptre and the pastoral staff shall 
be in the same hand ; when we shall be kings and priests, 
a royal priesthood unto our God — what shall we offer ? 
We shall bring the loveliest flowers ; and oh, how beauti- 
ful will the flowers be of a regenerated earth ! and the 
richest fruits, and the rarest produce of the ground, in 
comparison of which the blighted flowers that Cain gath- 
ered under the shadow of the walls of Paradise were as 
nothing ; and these sweet flowers and those rare fruits we, 
the priests of creation, shall offer unto Him that redeemed 
us ; and we will say to him : Blessed Lord, thou Priest 
of priests, thou King of kings, these sweet flowers have 
derived their exquisite tints from thy look ; these fragrant 
flowers have derived their perfume from thy breath ; these 
rich fruits have been ripened in thy smiles ; we, priests, 
redeemed by thy blood, and standing before thy throne, 
offer them to thee as creation's first fruits, restored, re- 
generated by thee, to which we are priests, offering all its 



KEIGNING PRIESTS. 



125 



produce to thee : for thine is the praise, thine the king- 
dom, and thine the glory. And we will offer ourselves 
for his service, and all our gifts for his glory, and all we 
are to his praise ; and we shall take our crowns and our 
mitres, our sceptres and our pastoral staffs ; all the insig- 
nia of priesthood, all the crowns of royalty, and we shall 
cast them in gleaming showers at his footstool, and we 
shall say as priests : " Worthy, worthy is the Lamb that 
was slain to receive honor, and riches, and glory, and pow- 
er, and dominion ; for he hath made us kings and priests 
unto our God ; and we shall reign with him for ever and 
ever ! " 

Oh glorious hope ! re-creation is no myth, any more 
than creation ; resurrection is no myth, any more than re- 
generation. All that sin injured shall be repaired ; on 
this very earth, under these bright stars, that the mists, 
and damps, and vapors of sin have not touched, you and I 
shall meet again — blessed thought ! and constitute a con- 
gregation, and surround a communion-table, where the 
palm-tree takes the place of the cypress ; where the an- 
them peal of joy takes the place of the melancholy minor 
wail of creation ; where all tears shall be wiped away ; 
where all doubts shall be dissolved ; where we shall never 
be faint and weary in listening, or in reading, or in prais- 
ing ; where this poor body of ours shall be no more a 
drag, no more a dead, heavy weight ; no more an interrup- 
tion ; but a ministry of energy, of effort, and success. 
Oh glorious day ! 

** Jerusalem, my happy home, 
When shall I come to thee ? 
When shall my sorrows have an end? 
Thy joys when shall I see ? 



126 THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



In the sweet words of an old Scottish writer among 

the Covenantors : — 

" All ! my sweet home, Jerusalem, 
Would God" I were with thee ; 
Would God my woes were at an end, 
Thy joys that I might see. 

" The saints are crowned with glory grea 
They see thee face to face ; 
They triumph still, they still rejoice, 
Most happy is their case. 

" For them they come in such delight, 
Such pleasure and such play, 
As that to them the thousand years 
Do seem as yesterday. 

" Jerusalem, my happy home, 
When shall I come to th ee ? 
When shall my sorrows have an end ? 
Would God I were with thee." 



SOUL AND BODY. 



127 



LECTURE VIII. 

SOUL AND BODY. 

"This is the first resurrection," &c. — Revelation xx. 5, 6. 

I WILL try to show you the certainty and glory of the 
fruits of the resurrection in what is here called the resur- 
rection of " them who were beheaded for the witness of 
Jesus, and for the word of God ; and who had not worship- 
ped the beast, neither his image ; and they lived and 
reigned with Christ a thousand years. This is the first 
resurrection." I need not repeat that this chapter is the 
epitome of what are called the millennial blessings, or the 
joys of the age that is yet to be. It is after all opposi- 
tion has been destroyed ; after Christ has returned to the 
world over which sin has reigned so long, that the seer, 
witnessing a grand panorama, the successive scenes of 
which sweep before his eye, and reveal to him new facts 
and phenomena, says that after this he beheld an angel 
come down from heaven, having the key of the abyss, 
that is, the place into which Satan *and sin shall be ulti- 
mately cast ; and the symbol of restricted power, a great 
chain in his hand ; and he laid hold upon the dragon, that 
is one of his titles, or the old serpent, whose subtilty in 
Paradise seduced Eve ; who is the Devil, or the accuser 
of the brethren, or Satan ; all his names combined ; and 



128 



to 

THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



bound him for a thousand years. We can see at once 
that the binding of Satan for a thousand years will be in 
the first place a great relief to this world ; just as his 
presence in this world must be a ceaseless, disturbing 
cause, to which is to be traced the authorship of the worst 
crimes that debase and deform mankind. He is said to 
have cast him into his own place. Where is Satan now ? 
Not everywhere ; but going about, which indicates change 
of locality, and therefore the absence of omnipresence ; 
going about on the earth seeking whom he may destroy. 
He is taken at the advent of this new era and cast into 
the bottomless pit, shut up and sealed, that he should de- 
ceive the nations no more, what has been his only 
pleasure for eighteen centuries and upwards, until the 
thousand years are fulfilled. Afterwards occurs, what is 
the most mysterious and difficult part of this book, that 
he is to be loosed for a little ; those who are the enemies 
of God are to come from the four quarters of the earth 
to make an attack upon the camp of the people of God, 
and to be destroyed. Then the millennium, like the 
dawn of the morning, is to break into the full-orbed sun- 
shine of everlasting day ; no disturbing, no disruptive 
elements being admissible ; no more tears, nor crying, 
nor sorrow ; a new heaven and a new earth, and all 
things made new ; joy for ever dwelling therein like a 
rainbow round a fountain of righteousness. Then says 
J ohn, I saw thrones, and they sat upon them ; and 
judgment was given to them. " Know ye not that the 
saints shall judge angels? and ye shall sit with me on 
twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel ; " the 
very promise of our Lord. " And judgment was given 
unto them ; and I saw the souls of them that were be- 



SOUL AND BODY. 



129 



headed for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of 
God;" that was for their faithfulness in testifying to 
Christ; "and which had not worshipped the beast," that 
is, the great Western Apostacy, v neither his image, 
neither had received his mark upon their foreheads ; " 
but were, in other words, Protestants ; u and they lived 
and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest 
of the dead lived not," that is, their dead bodies were 
not raised, " until the thousand years were finished." 
This first one that he has referred to is the first resurrec- 
tion. And then, " Blessed and holy is he that hath part 
in this first resurrection. 

I wish to show here that there are two distincts acts in the 
great drama, if I may use the expression, of the resurrec- 
tion — one which takes place at the commencement of the 
millennial day, and the other which takes place immediately 
at its close. Before I proceed to this, however, let me state 
what I believe, as indeed I can prove, that now, whilst 
the body is mouldering in the grave, where the soul of 
the Christian has left it, to be prepared and made ready 
for that soul when it comes back again in all its glory and 
its perfection, the soul that has left it enters instantly into 
all the happiness and joy of which it is capable. The 
present state of the souls of believers is not their full joy ; 
that will be when soul and body are united together. 
And hence throughout the whole Scripture the souls of 
believers in heaven are represented as in a state of waiting 
or expectancy for the extrication of their dead dust from 
the grave* and for its being rebuilt a glorious shrine, a 
meet home for the glorified spirit that is to dwell in it for 
ever and ever. In touching words this truth is portrayed 
in the Epistle to the Thessalonians ; where we learn that 



130 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



the soul of the believer is in perfect and conscious happi- 
ness, from the distinct statement of God. But we have 
the means and elements of such a conviction in some de- 
gree in our own experience. The soul often acts with 
greater intensity when it disentangles itself from its ma- 
terial tenement. I am absorbed one day in thought ; a 
topic that intensely delights me is subjected to the investi- 
gation and analysis of my mind. I am so absorbed in pur- 
suing the theme I love that the clock strikes, person en- 
ter the room and go out again, music is heard upon the 
streets, the beat of many feet is echoed from the pave- 
ment ; all noises and sounds transpire around me that in 
ordinary circumstances would disturb me ; I have not 
heard a sound. Why ? how so ? The ears were shut, the 
senses were in abeyance, the soul had drawn in its tides 
from the outer shores. Disentangled thus from the com- 
plications of all outward action, it thought with the great- 
est intensity, and lived and acted with the completest and 
most thorough consciousness. Is not this so far a proof 
that the soul becomes vigorous in proportion as it lets go 
its hold of the body ; that the less it is fettered by its 
earthly tenement the more intense, the more keen, the 
more powerful it becomes ; as if to teach us in this world 
that the soul separate from the body is not in a state of 
unconciousness, but that then it begins its nobler life, puts 
forth its grandest powers ; and is capable of worship, and 
of adoration, and of study, and of thought, separate from 
the body, of which it is altogether incapable in this pres- 
ent economy. It will only be able to regain its highest 
glory and power when the body, purified, glorified, and 
risen, shall be worthy of so kingly an inhabitant to abide 
in it for ever and ever. 



SOUL AND BODY. 



131 



Hence I have always felt what I think is most comforting 
to Christians, that in no case is the soul ever injured upon 
earth. In the condition of the veriest idiot, or of the 
most thorough lunatic, the soul in its innermost sanctuary 
remains perfect, unmutilated, and were it free, capable of 
grand imaginings, as was the soul of Newton, or of 
Shakspeare, or of Milton. Then it will he asked, How 
do you account for the humiliating spectacle presented by 
either of these? I would try to explain it this way. 
My feet, let me suppose, are paralyzed, but the soul is not 
touched ; my hands are next paralyzed, but still the soul 
is not touched. A step further, my brain, which is a still 
more important organ, is paralyzed, or pressed upon, but 
yet my soul is not touched. But you say, I am incapable 
when the brain is pressed upon of thinking, at least of 
speaking, acting, writing, in the way I was accustomed to 
do before — how will you meet this ? It is not the soul 
that has undergone a change, but the outward hand of the 
soul, which we call the brain, that will not respond to its 
volitions. When you see a man paralyzed in the hand, he 
has lost the power of writing, but his skill is the same it 
ever was ; his own idea of what should be, and his desire 
to accomplish what he means, is as perfect as ever. Then 
what has gone wrong ? The nerves and muscles of the 
hand which is the instrument will not respond, because 
they are weak. And so in the case of the lunatic, when 
he does not appear as he did before ; when he is incapable 
of those deeds, thoughts, conceptions, as far as we can see 
them, by which he was marked before, we shall find it is 
not his soul that is decayed, but it is the organ through 
which it acts that has suffered injury. Place the noblest 
minstrel that the sun ever shone upon beside a harp whose 



132 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



strings are broken or out of tune ; he strikes the vibrat- 
ing chord, but he brings forth no sweet music. Why ? 
He has not parted with his skill, nor lost his genius ; but 
the instrument by which he expresses what he knows has 
lost its pow r er of giving utterance to them. In the same 
manner, when a person becomes what is called a lunatic, 
it is not the soul that has gone wrong ; but the instru- 
ment of many strings, so exquisitely toned when perfect, 
so liable to go wrong in the wear, and tear, and pressure 
of an overwhelming world, that will not convey to the 
outer ear the thoughts, imaginations, and conceptions of 
the soul. I have often felt this when I have seen persons 
do what is very cruel — tease a lunatic or an idiot ; I 
have always had the impression that the poor man had 
just as bright thoughts as I have, as clear conceptions of 
what was right to do, but he could not express them, he 
could not carry them out ; the birth of the thoughts was 
complete ; their development in the outer world faltered 
and failed ever as he made the attempt. It is not the soul, 
again I repeat, that is gone wrong ; but it is the outward 
machinery through which it speaks. November darkness, 
of which we have so full experience in London, is not the 
extinction of the sun, but the intervention of a fog ; an 
eclipse is not the extinction of the moon, but only the 
shadow of the earth upon it. So insanity, paralysis, and 
sickness, are not accidents of the soul, but diseases of the 
house in which the soul lives, in consequence of which it 
cannot act upon the world with which it is made to come 
into contact. Hence let the fog dissolve, and the suja 
comes forth in November as bright and pure as in June ; 
let the earth move on, and the moon's disc is as bright and 
beautiful as before ; let health be restored to the body, 



SOUL AND BODY. 



133 



and he that was pronounced a lunatic may be among the 
wisest and the most accomplished of men. Do not there- 
fore suppose that in this case anything has gone wrong 
with the soul ; it is only something that has gone wrong with 
the machinery. In old age, when men begin to get more 
quiet and retired ; when it seems as if the soul retreated 
into the innermost recesses of the body as the tide of life 
ebbs away from the shores of the senses ; when man seems 
not to be so acute, or so clear in his head, or so vigorous 
in his thoughts, or so brilliant in his imaginations, what is 
it that is at fault ? Not the soul ; it is probably riper and 
more vigorous than it ever was ; but the body tumbling to 
pieces ; rafters are falling here, fragments there, the roof 
yielding elsewhere ; and how can we expect that the inhab- 
itant can enjoy comfort when the house is going to pieces 
about him ? It is thus that we draw the inference that 
the soul is in the oldest man just as mature, as vigorous, 
as capable of thought and of great thought, as it is in the 
youngest. There is a great outcry in the present day 
against employing men who are old for great and arduous 
purposes. An old man with a thoroughly vigorous body 
is more to be trusted a vast deal than a young man or a 
man of middle age ; if he has a weak and worn-out body, 
that alters the matter altogether. But as long as the 
physical health is strong, you have a soul in an old man 
riper, with greater experience, capable of greater things, 
than the soul of a far younger man or a man of middle 
age. It is one of the proofs that this world is not our 
home, that just as the soul has grown readiest for living 
it leaves it. Can I suppose that this world is our all, our 
only destiny, when I notice that just after I have acquir- 
ed so much knowledge, so much experience, so much wis- 



134 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



dom, so much thought — that when I have served my ap- 
prenticeship to life, and am ready to live — instead of 
being allowed to live, I must go the way of all the earth, 
and leave a scene for which I am at length most fit ? 
What does this prove ? That this world is but the vesti- 
bule of another ; that time is the grand porch of eternity, 
and that life here is only a preparation for that glorious 
life which alone is worthy of the name. 

Having seen that the soul may live independent of the 
body, let me notice what is stated in the next place, that 
the body is just as immortal, and in its ultimate results as 
indestructible, as the soul. We see it laid in the grave, 
folded in the narrow house appointed for all living, till 
those that loved most the countenance that even under the 
shadow of death is so dear to them, must bury it in the 
grave, and hide it out of sight. Yet of that very dust 
that is laid in that sepulchre it is written — " This mortal 
shall put on immortality, and this corruptible incorruption ; 
and those traces of the cold finger of death legible to all 
that run while they look — this death shall be swallowed 
up in victory ; " and in that very fallen, but then resusci- 
tated shrine I shall not feel only, but sing, " death, 
where is thy sting? grave, where is thy victory?" 
This leads me to think of that day when the trumpet shall 
sound, and Christ shall descend ; and with him the souls 
of all that are now with him in glory ; and the beautiful 
thought shall be actual which is so comforting to all, that 
when we leave this world it is not the last time we shall be 
in it ; we shall return to it again : " Them that sleep in 
Christ will he bring with him ; ' J and on that very spot in 
which the soul laid down that dead dust it shall put on 
that same again; not the clinging garment of decay, but 



SOUL AND BODY. 



135 



the glorious robe of immortality ; and we shall be caught 
up together with Christ, and so shall we be for ever with 
the Lord. Hence when the trumpet sounds the dead dust 
that sleeps beneath the green sod of the country church- 
yard; the royal dust of all the Pharaohs, entombed in the 
bosom of the Pyramids themselves ; noble clay in marble 
mausolea and in monuments of bronze ; the sailor that 
sleeps so sweetly in the Euxine, with the ^sea waves to 
chime his requiem and the winds to peal his last funeral 
march ; the caravans that have been buried in the sand- 
drifts of the deserts of Central Africa, — shall all rise at 
that royal sound ; and this mortal shall put on immortality, 
and this corruptible incorruption, and death shall be swal- 
lowed up in victory. These two facts, then, are absolute- 
ly certain : the soul's individuality, its distinct existence 
whilst the body is in the grave ; its higher life while it is 
separated from the body ; and secondly, the certainty of 
the resurrection of the body, of the very body that fell, 
without its defects, without its decay without any of the 
evidences and the traces of sin and sorrow about it. 

Having established these two facts, let me notice now, 
what T think is the main subject of the passage I have 
selected, that there are in Scripture two distinct resur- 
rections. And that these two resurrections exist will be 
obvious if I turn your attention to the perfect parallelism 
between the verse I have read in Revelation xx. and other 
verses contained in the Gospel. For instance, in verse 4 
it is said : " They lived." In 1 Corinthians xv. 22, it is 
said : " In Christ shall all be made alive." That is literal. 
Inverse 4 it is said : £l They reigned with Christ a thous- 
and years." Are we to take that as literal ? Hear the 
whole promise, 2 Timothy ii. 12 : "If we suffer with him, 



136 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



we shall also reign with him." Is the suffering literal? 
Yes. Then the rei™n£ with him must be literal also. 
Again, it is said in verse 5 : " This is the first resurrec- 
tion." Luke xiv. 14 : " Thou shalt be recompensed at the 
resurrection of the just ; " that is, the resurrection as 
distinguished from that of the unjust. In verse 6 it is 
said : ci Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first 
resurrection." In John v. 29, it is said : " They that 
have done good shall come forth unto the resurrection of 
life." In verse 6 it is said : " On such the second death 
hath no power." In Luke xx. 35, it is said: "They 
which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and 
the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are 
given in marriage ; neither can they die any more." Now 
in every instance I have quoted from the Gospels this not 
dying any more, this living, this reigning, this recompense 
at the first resurrection, are all described as strictly liter- 
al ; and if so they prove that this chapter, instead of being 
a mere fanciful parable, is a literal prediction of strict and 
literal facts. 

In 1 Corinthians xv. we read : " Every man in his own 
order ; Christ the first fruits ; " he rose on a Sunday 1830 
years ago ; " afterward they that are Christ's at his com- 
ing; " mark you, not all, but " they that are Christ's at 
his coming." 

Let us enumerate the difficulties that have been urged 
by those who do not take the literal view of the passage. 
It has been said that all this is purely a figurative picture, 
and that we are not to understand the resurrection of the 
dead spoken of in this 5th verse as identical with the re- 
surrection of the dead spoken of by Paul, by our blessed 
Lord, and by all the apostles. They allege that this is 



SOUL AND BODY. 



137 



the resurrection of the spirit, and the principles, and the 
faith, and the hopes, of the sainted martyrs ; not there- 
fore, as they think, a literal resurrection of the body. If 
it be so, it is easy to arrive at the conclusion that logically 
follows, that there is no resurrection at all. And hence 
one writer in America, distinguished for his genius and 
even for his piety, Bush, has consistently followed out the 
conclusion of Brown, Barnes, and others, and declares that 
there is no such thing as a resurrection of the body at all, 
but only the safety and happiness of the soul. But if you 
look into this passage, you will read : ' ' The rest of the 
dead lived not again until the thousand years were finish- 
ed." Does not that imply that some of the dead lived at 
the beginning, and that the rest of the dead lived not till 
the thousand years were finished ? Well, let us look at 
the close of the thousand years, at verse 11, where John 
says : "I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on 
it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away ; 
and there was found no place for them. And I saw the 
dead, small and great, stand before God ; and the books 
were opened ; and another book was opened, which is the 
book of life ; and the dead were judged out of those things 
which were written in the books, according to their works. 
And the sea gave up the dead i which were in it ; and death 
and hell," death and hades, " delivered up the dead which 
were in them ; and they were judged every man according 
to their works. And death and hell were cast into the 
lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever 
was not found written in the book of life was cast into the 
lake of fire." If the first resurrection that is spoken of 
in verse 5 is only a figurative and spiritual thing, then 
the resurrection delineated at the close of the chapter must 



138 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



be a figurative thing also ; and the inference is that there 
is no resurrection at all. But on the other hand, if this 
second resurrection at the close of the chapter be literal, 
then the first resurrection must be literal also ; for first 
and second apply to similar things, and are descriptive of 
similar events, only with numerical distinction or succes- 
sion. We therefore argue that as it is confessed by all, 
with one exception, that the resurrection spoken of at the 
close of the chapter is literal, we must infer that the re- 
surrection spoken of in the 5th verse is literal also ; and 
that there is therefore a first and second literal resurrec- 
tion of the body. Besides, it seems to me as if the sacred 
penman had taken pains to teach this, for what does he 
say? "This is, 1 ' when he explains what he has been 
saying, " This is the first resurrection." That is John's 
way of explaining what he has already said. For in- 
stance, when he saw seven candlesticks, he says: "The 
seven candlesticks are the seven churches;" that is, he 
tells you what they mean. So after he has given this 
glowing description of the dawn of the millennial morn, 
he explains what it is ; it is, he says, the first resurrection ; 
the explanation being the literal historical fact ; what pre- 
ceded being something difficult that needs to be explained. 
But the objection made by Barnes, with apparent force, is 
drawn from Ezekiel xxxvii. 12, where the following words 
occur: "Prophesy unto the dry bones, saith the Lord; 
Behold, my people, I will open your graves, and cause 
you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the 
land of Israel." Now, argues Mr. Barnes, who in other 
respects is a very able commentator, here we have the 
words grave, burial, resurrection, used in a sense that 
everybody will confess to be figurative ; it is a description 



SOUL AND BODY. 



139 



of the Jewish people that Ezekiel here portrays ; and un- 
questionably these words grave, resurrection, death, bu- 
rial, as used by Ezekiel, are not to be taken in their liter- 
al, but in their figurative or metaphorical sense. Then ar- 
gues Mr. Barnes, you must interpret Rev. xx. by Eze- 
kiel xxxvii. Now it would seem to me that the right way 
is to interpret the Old Testament by the New, not the New 
Testament by the Old ; or the more obscure by the more 
bright. But the real reply to this objection is a conclusive 
one. The prophet explains who it is that are dead ; he tells 
you that these bones are the house of Israel ; in other words, 
it is a national death, a national burial ; and therefore 
justly and fairly it indicates a national or figurative resur- 
rection. But in Rev. xx., taking the very principle ad- 
mitted by Mr. Barnes, the Evangelist says it was a literal 
death, for they were beheaded with the sword ; and as he 
states it is a literal death, so we must argue, by the very 
illustration that Mr. Barnes has quoted, that it is a literal 
resurrection. In other words, we have the key in each 
instance to the solution of the whole subject. In Ezekiel 
it is expressly declared to be a national, figurative death ; 
therefore it is a national, figurative resurrection : in the 
Book of Revelation it is expressly declared to be a literal, 
actual death ; therefore we argue it is a literal, actual re- 
surrection. But it has been objected to this again that 
here we have an account, not of the bodies of those that 
were buried, but only of their souls. For instance, the 
words are : "I saw thrones, and they sat upon them ; and 
I saw the souls of them that were beheaded." Well, it 
has been argued from this that as only souls are spoken of, 
we must understand it to be purely figurative and spiritual, 
not material and literal. I may repeat, in the first place, 



140 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION". 



that the soul is repeatedly used in Scripture for the whole 
man. In Nineveh were so many souls ; that means bodies. 
Again, not one soul should be saved ; that means the whole 
man. But I will not assume that here ; but what I allege 
is, that whilst the seer uses the expression " soul," he de- 
scribes what they are by what they were previous to their 
resurrection. The evidence that he does so is found in 
the close of this chapter, where he says, for instance, <; I 
saw the dead, small and great, stand before God ; " but 
they were living when they stood before God. The Evan- 
gelist describes them by what they were before they were 
risen. So when he describes them that were beheaded he 
calls them souls, what they were before they were raised, 
and had experienced the first resurrection ; just as in the 
same manner he calls the dead, small and great, standing 
before the throne, what they were before they were raised, 
in order to describe, or rather to identify them with the 
same persons. And perhaps another reason may be that 
John uses the phrase souls to lead back the reader to the 
beautiful scene in the 6th chapter, under the fifth seal, 
where we read that " The souls of them that were slain 
for the word of God cried with a loud voice, saying, How 
long, Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and 
avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth ? And 
white robes were given unto every one of them; and it 
was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little 
season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren, 
that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled." 
But, in order to show the continuity of the drama, and to 
be consolation, as it were, to these, here is the fulfilment 
of the promise made to the souls below the altar ; that 
these very souls that thus cried and were thus replied to 



SOUL AND BODY. 



141 



rose and reigned with Christ in their risen bodies a thou- 
sand years. Besides, the whole language is inapplicable 
to the soul. How could the soul be buried ? how could the 
soul rise ? The just, and fair, and obvious interpretation 
of the chapter is that it was the dead raised from their 
graves, the dead in Christ ; and constituting the first re- 
surrection. 

But it has been urged as another difficulty that martyrs 
only are spoken of. 1 answer, John's attention was arrest- 
ed by the foremost of the group, and these chiefly be al- 
ludes to. Our blessed Lord is not mentioned by John in 
the midst of them, though it is obvious that he was there ; 
then only the dead are mentioned at the great white throne, 
but the living were there also. And again, by referring 
primarily to martyrs he may by another link identify this 
glorious issue with the promise made to the martyrs under 
the fifth seal, to which I have already alluded ; that white 
robes were given to them, and they should rest for a little 
season. If in addition to this we take other passages of 
Scripture, we shall find the same idea distinctly unfolded 
throughout the whole New Testament. For instance, in 
Romans viii. 18, I read as follows : "I reckon that the 
sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be com- 
pared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For 
the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the 
manifestation," literally, the revelation, " of the sons of 
God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not 
willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the 
same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be de- 
livered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious 
liberty of the children of God. For we know that the 
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together 



142 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which 
have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan 
within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the re- 
demption of our body." Here then is all creation repre- 
sented as in a state of agony and expectancy till a certain 
event is consummated. What is that event ? The re- 
demption or the resurrection of the bodies of Christians, 
which is the first resurrection. And then in that mag- 
nificent chapter, 1 Corinthians xv., we have the same 
thought brought out unmistakably there also. Verse 22. 
for instance : For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ 
shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order ; 
Christ the first fruits ; afterward they that are Christ's at 
his coming. Then cometh the end." Now the Greek 
words there are very remarkable ; n Christ the first fruits ; 
afterward;" enetra denotes an interval; eiru another 
word, meaning also a longer interval, lt the end, when he 
shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Fa- 
ther." So in the 52nd verse of the same chapter : £t In a 
moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump ; 
for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised 
incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corrupti- 
ble must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on 
immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on 
incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, 
then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, 
Death is swallowed up in victory ; " that is the descrip- 
tion of risen believers ; not of risen unbelievers. " 
death, where is thy sting ? grave, where is thy victory ? 
The stins: of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. 
But thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through 
our Lord Jesus Christ." All this alludes to Christians 



SOUL AND BODY. 



143 



only ; because the risen wicked will not thank Christ for 
their resurrection ; they will not praise him for their vic- 
tory ; they will not say, " death, where is thy sting? 
grave, where is thy victory ? " When you come to that 
very remarkable passage in 1 Thess. iv., you find a still 
further parallel explanation of it : "If we believe that 
Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep 
in Jesus will God bring with him." When he comes 
down to this world, he will Come again to judge the quick 
and the dead. " For this we say unto you by the word 
of the Lord; that we Christians who are alive when 
Christ comes, and remain until the very advent of the 
Lord, shall have no precedence in rising from the grave 
over them that died hundreds of years before. For the 
Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with 
the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God ; 
and the dead in Christ shall rise first ; then we which are 
alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in 
the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air ; and so shall we 
ever be with the Lord." But why caught up in the air? 
We read in the close of 2 Peter, that when that day comes 
as a thief in the night, the elements shall melt with fer- 
vent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein 
shall be burned up. Then this process will take place 
while Christ and his risen saints and his glorified living 
ones are in the air ; and as soon as this earth has under- 
gone its last baptism, and is purified by fire, and made a 
meet dwelling-place for the resurrection bodies of the 
saints, this island world of ours, struck off by sin from 
' the great continent of glory, shall be reunited to that con- 
tinent ; no deep sea shall separate them, no terrible gulf 
shall part them; but they that are there and we that are 



144 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



here shall constitute one bright, and happy, and better 
country; and Satan will see at the end that instead of 
having gained one trophy he has been the instrument, not 
willingly but by coercion, of this earth being made a no- 
bler home than when Adam and Eve were first introduced 
into it ; and man raised to a pitch of glory, happiness, and 
peace that would never have had an existence if sin had 
not entered and man had not fallen. I know the difficulty 
occurs to some, if this earth is to be burned, as Peter dis- 
tinctly states, how is it possible that any can live while 
the earth undergoes that dread and terrible baptism ? 
That it is to be so Scripture emphatically asserts. The 
heavens and the earth are kept stored with fire until that 
day. Geology here steps in und confirms what Scripture 
risserts. But it is asked, if this earth is to be destroyed, 
how can God's people, their bodies being raised before its 
baptism, live during so fiery an ordeal ? The answer is, 
God saved a remnant at the Deluge, when the Flood over- 
flowed the wide world ; God saved a Lot from burning 
Sodom ; God saved the Christians from the wreck of J e- 
rusalem. If God has said it shall be, we know that it 
must be. But the probable explanation of the difficulty 
is this : we shall be raised up with the Lord in the air ; 
but is there no intimation in the Thessalonians that we re- 
turn? I open the 21st chapter of Revelation, which fol- 
lows the millennium, and we have there the picture of the 
return : " I saw a new heaven and a new earth ; for the 
first heaven and the first earth were passed away. And I 
saw the holy city, new Jerusalem " — that is, the com- 
pany of God's people — " coming down from God out of 
heaven " — having been caught up with the Lord in the 
air till this fiery baptism was finished-^ " coming down 



SOUL AND BODY. 



145 



from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for 
her husband. And so shall they thus be for ever with 
the Lord." 

A passage has been quoted from Daniel xii. 2, which 
seems at first not to sanction this idea : 11 Many of them 
that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to 
everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting con- 
tempt." If this be strictly and literally translated, ifc 
would imply that the resurrection of all shall take place 
at once ; and that when the whole are raised, some will be 
for everlasting life, some for everlasting death. But it is 
remarkable that here again our translation is at fault. A 
most distinguished critic says : " There is in this passage 
a distinction between them that awake and them that 
sleep ; and the strict and literal translation is : ' And 
many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall 
awake ; these ' " — that is, those who awake — " 'to ever- 
lasting life ; and those ' " — that is, the parties that sleep 
— '"to everlasting death.'" So that the passage, in- 
stead of disproving it, would prove it. 

Such is the prospect before the saints of God. " Bless- 
ed and holy is he that hath part in this resurrection." 
How should we aspire to partake of it ! how anxious 
should we be to be found in Him who is the resurrection 
and the life ! And that resurrection will consist of all 
the individuality of every Christian that ever fell asleep. 
Not one flower shall perish ; not one sheaf shall be lost ; 
not one shall be wanting at that glorious Easter morn 
when nature shall put on her Easter robes, and no sin nor 
trace of sorrow shall be known in it any more. I believe 
at that day, in all probability not extremely remote, the 
dust you consigned to the grave, thinking it would be 



146 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



long before you should ever meet it again, shall come 
forth ; and not one fugitive expression on the countenance 
shall be wanting ; not one tone in the well-remembered 
voice shall be hushed ; not one element that enabled you 
to distinguish and to say, " This is my child ; that is my 
wife ; this is my husband ; that is my son," shall be then 
and there missing. There will be perfect recognition, 
perpetual communion ; all the excellencies of humanity 
will survive, with none of its defects ; more than its pris- 
tine glory will be there, with nothing of its subsequent 
decay ; and so shall we be for ever with the Lord. 



SATAN LOOSED FOR A LITTLE. 



147 



LECTURE IX. 

SATAN LOOSED FOR A LITTLE. 

There are difficulties in every great truth. We see 
through a glass darkly — yet we see. What we are about 
to read and discuss has long perplexed the prophetic stu- 
dent. 

" And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out 
of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the 
four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together 
to battle ; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they 
went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the 
saints about, and the beloved city ; and fire came down from God out 
of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them 
was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the 
false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and 
ever." — Revelation xx. 7 — 10. 

It is right that I should show that I am not singular — 
not at all singular — in my interpretation of this chapter. 
Learning and piety hold the same views. Upon the great 
and essential verities of the Gospel I speak with all the 
dogmatism, if you like, with which it is possible to speak. 
I have no doubt that Christ is God ; or that it is his blood 
alone that cleanseth from all sin ; or that the Spirit of 
God alone changes the human heart. On these things, 
therefore, I speak absolutely, as an ambassador from 



148 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



heaven, bringing glad tidings, and laying them at the door 
of every man's individual heart. But when I try to ex- 
plain a confessedly difficult theme, I admit at the begin- 
ning, and I would repeat it at the close, I may be wrong. 
But it becomes the duty surely of one who has a Bible, 
and who believes that every word in that Bible is from 
God, to do his best to cast light upon it. I am persuaded 
the force and weight of evidence is in favor of the expo- 
sition I have given. If you can present an exposition 
that casts more consistent light upon it, I will accept it ; 
but I must retain my present belief till I have conclusive 
evidence, such as I have not yet seen, in the opposite direc- 
tion. One of the ablest Greek scholars of the clay is the 
present Dean of Canterbury, Dr. Alford. He has writ- 
ten a critical Greek Testament; and as he has just pub- 
lished the fourth volume, which treats on the Apocalypse, 
I felt anxious to ascertain what he says upOn that very 
subject. He states one remarkable fact, that all the wri- 
ters of the earliest alges of the Christian Church of weight 
and character hold substantially the same view that I have 
been endeavoring to elucidate in these lectures. For in- 
stance, he says : " Some of the more marked upholders 
of the view since that great Revolution — " that is, the 
Trench Revolution — " have been divided among them- 
selves as to the question, whether the expected second ad- 
vent of our Lord is to be regarded as preceding or suc- 
ceeding the thousand years' reign or millennium. The 

MAJORITY, BOTH IN NUMBER, AND IN LEARNING AND RE- 
SEARCH, ADOPT THE PRE-MILLENNIAL ADVENT ; follow- 
ing, as it seems to me, the plain and undeniable sense of 
the sacred text of the book itself." Such is the testimo- 
ny of one who is at least competent to speak. He says in 



SATAN LOOSED FOR A LITTLE. 



149 



another part of the same book : " On one point I have 
ventured to speak strongly, because my conviction on it is 
strong, founded on the rules of fair and consistent inter- 
pretation — I mean, the necessity of accepting literally 
the first resurrection, and the millennial reign. It seems 
to me that if in a sentence where two resurrections are 
spoken of with no mark of distinction between them (it is 
otherwise in John v. 28, which is commonly alleged for 
the view I am combating) — in a sentence where, one re- 
surrection having been related, £ the rest of the dead ' 
are afterwards mentioned — we are at liberty to under- 
stand the former one figuratively and spiritually, and the 
latter literally and materially, then there is an end of all 
definite meaning in plain words ; and the Apocalypse, or 
any other book, may mean anything we please. It is a 
curious fact that those who sustain this, studious as they 
generally are to uphold the primitive interpretation, are 
obliged, not only to wrest the plain sense of words, but to 
desert the unanimous consensus of the primitive Fathers, 
some of whom lived early enough to have retained apos- 
tolic tradition on this point. Not till Chiliastic views had 
run into unspiritual excesses was this interpretation de- 
parted from. It now remains that I say somewhat re- 
specting my own view of the character and arrangement 
of the prophecy, which may furnish the reader with a gen- 
eral idea of the nature of the interpretation given in the 
notes. And first for the principles on which that inter- 
pretation is based. The book is a revelation given by the 
Father to Christ, and imparted by him through his angel 
to St. John, to declare to his servants things which must 
shortly come to pass ; in other words, the future conflicts 
and triumphs of his church ; these being the things which 



150 THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 

concerned ' his servants.' Of all these, the greatest event 
is his own coming in glory. In consequence, it is put for- 
ward in the introduction of the book with all solemnity, 
and its certainty sealed by an asseveration from the Al- 
mighty and everlasting God. Accordingly, we find every 
part of the prophecy full of the subject. The Epistles 
to the Churches continually recur to it ; and it forms the 
solemn conclusion, as it did the opening of the book. But 
it was not the first time that this great subject had been 
spoken of in prophecy. The Old Testament prophets had 
all announced it ; and the language of this book is full of 
the prophetic imagery which we also find in them. The 
first great key to the understanding of the Apocalypse is 
the analogy of Old Testament prophecy. The next is our 
Lord's own prophetic discourse, before insisted on in this 
reference. He himself had previously delivered a great 
prophecy, giving in clear outline the main points of the 
history of the church. In this prophecy, the progress of 
the Gospel, its hindrances and corruptions, the judgments 
on the unbelieving, the trials of the faithful, the ^safety 
of God's elect amidst all, and the final redemption in 
glory of his faithful people, were all indicated. There, 
they were enwrapped in language which w T as in great part 
primarily applicable to the great typical judgment on the 
chosen people — the destruction of Jerusalem. "When 
this book was written that event had taken place, complet- 
ing the first and partial fulfilment of our Lord's predic- 
tions. Now, it remained for prophecy to declare to the 
church God's course of dealing with the nations of the 
earth, by which the same predictions are to be again ful- 
filled on a larger scale, and with greater fullness of mean- 
ing. It is somewhat astonishing that many of those who 



SATAN LOOSED FOR A LITTLE. 



151 



recognize to the full the eschatological character of the 
prophetic discourse of our Lord should have failed to ob- 
serve in the Apocalypse the very same features of ar- 
rangement, and an analogy challenging continual obser- 
vation." And then he says, in another part : " But here 
again, according to the practice of which I cannot too 
often remind the student, a voice from heaven announces 
the character of the new and final vision which is to fol- 
low : Blessed are they which are called to the marriage 
supper of the Lamb. And now, in the prophetic details 
of the third of the previous angelic announcements, and of 
the proclamation of the blessedness of the holy dead, the 
great events of the time of the end crowd, in their dread 
majesty, upon us. First, the procession of the glorified 
Redeemer with the armies of heaven following him, com- 
ing forth to tread the winepress of the wrath of Almighty 
God. Then, the great battle of the Lord against his 
foes, the beast and the false prophet, leagued with the 
kings of the earth against him. Then, the binding of the 
dragon, the old serpent, for a season. Then, the first re- 
surrection, the judgment of the church, the millennial 
reign ; as to which I have again and again raised my ear- 
nest protest against evading the plain sense of words, and 
spiritualizing in the midst of plain declarations of fact. 
That the Lord will come in person to this our earth ; that 
his risen elect will reign here with him and judge ; that 
during that blessed reign the power of evil will be bound, 
and the glorious prophecies of peace and truth on earth 
find their accomplishment — this is my firm persuasion, 
and not mine alone, but that of multitudes of Christ's 
waiting people, as it was that of his primitive apostolic 
church, before controversy blinded the eyes of the fathers 



152 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



to the light of prophecy. But the end is not yet" — 
and this introduces what I am now going to speak on — 
" one struggle more, and that the last. At the end of 
the millennial period Satan is unloosed, and the nations of 
the earth are deceived by him ; they come up against and 
encircle the camp of the saints and the beloved city ; and 
fire comes down out of heaven and consumes them, and 
the devil who deceived them is cast into the lake of fire. 
Then is described the general judgment of the dead, the 
destruction of death and Hades, and the condemnation of 
all whose names are not found w r rittenin the book of life." 

I have extracted this because it is the judgment of a 
learned and candid scholar, who has spent his days and 
years in elucidating the sacred text ; and I must say, his 
judgment so perfectly coinciding with my own, formed 
without the knowledge of his book, for the book has only 
been recently published, is to me additional proof, if ad- 
ditional were wanting, that ignorant men may scoff, and 
silly sceptics may sneer, but they cannot overturn the 
truth, or arrest the march of events. As soon may the 
waves of the sea wash the rocks away as the scoff or the 
sneer of the thoughtless shake truths based not on the 
fancies of the ignorant, but on the severest exegesis and 
the most profound criticism of the best and ablest scholars 
of this and of earlier ages. 

But all heretofore and up to the subject of this lecture 
has been exceedingly plain, at least, according to my 
mind. Here, however, I enter on a passage which I con- 
fess is beset with difficulties. I do not know well how 
to discuss it, or how and by what means I can cast any 
new or intenser light upon it ; but it would be unfair if 
after having tasted all the sweets of the previous part, and 



SATAX LOOSED FOR A LITTLE. 



153 



leaving something of the beauty and grandeur of the close 
still to enter upon, I should have passed over this very 
difficult section of a grand theme : namely, the unloosing 
of Satan, vrhich the Dean of Canterbury believes to be 
literal ; his deceiving the nations, and then his final catas- 
trophe. 

These thousand years of beauty and of blessedness are 
to have a close ; a close that in some degree seems unde- 
sirable and disastrous ; but perhaps it will only be brief, 
like a summer night in the North of Scotland, where, when 
the evening twilight comes, and just as its darkest mo- 
ment arrives, the first rays of the morning twilight begin 
to cover the mountain tops, and to glorify the length and 
breadth of the land. So it may be that this night at the 
close of that millennial day will be very short, and that 
its last expiring shadow will be lost and glorified in that 
grand sunburst whose beams shall have no interruption, 
whose brightness will have no shadow : for he shall reign 
and shine in noontide splendor for ever and for ever. 
There is one thought, however, full of practical instruc- 
tion to us ; that is, that Satan is set forth in three differ- 
ent places as indulging in one great wickedness. For in- 
stance, in the 3d verse it is said K that he should deceive 
the nations no more; " and then it is said that he is to 
go out, at the end, to deceive the nations once more. I 
wish Christians were as consistent in their good work as 
the devil is in his bad one ; he goes out at the close of 
these thousand years, still on the same career and for the 
same mission, to deceive the nations. This is the charac- 
teristic practice of Satan. I believe, at the present hour. 
If I accept nations in their strict and literal significance, 
I may ask what explains the chronic fever that pervades 

7* 



151 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION 



all the nations of the earth at this moment, unless it be 
the power and presence of some giant deception of the 
kind here spoken of? Look where yon may, you trace his 
footprints. Turn, for instance, to the Mahometan na- 
tion : it seems as if Satan, knowing he has but little time, 
were rousing into its maddest frenzy the fanaticism of the 
Moslem; so that the massacre that took place at Jedda, 
and the massacres that have filled the streets of Damas- 
cus with blood, and the atrocities that would take place 
even in the neighborhood of Constantinople if they were 
not under the eyes of the powers that sheltered them 
once, but probably will not shelter them again ; all seem 
to indicate that Satan, knowing that he has but a little 
time, is seizing every national element of disturbance, 
and exasperating it to the very utmost of his power. 

If I turn to another nation of the earth, without touch- 
ing anything that goes beyond my province, Russia is seen 
still thirsting to raise the Cross on the Mosque of St. So- 
phia, still looking for the beautiful Bosphorus and the 
shores of the Mediterranean as the limits of her gigantic 
and powerful empire ; and perhaps if she were mistress 
of Turkey matters could not be worse than they are ; for 
Constantinople and Turkey in Europe, and every land in 
which the Turco-Moslem is encamped, has become the 
shame and the scandal of Europe, not to say of the world ; 
and if it were safe for the equilibrium of nations that 
Russia should have Constantinople (and I believe she is 
destined in the prophetic record to have it. and will have 
it, do as nations like.) it could not be worse than it is un- 
der the reign of "the sick man," whose slippers two im- 
perial candidates are waiting to possess, and whose death 
will lead to convulsions that, according to the prophetic 



SATAN LOOSED EOH A LITTLE. 



155 



record, will envenom the troubles of the latter days. If 
we look across the sea to another part of the continent of 
Europe, does it not seem as if Satan were still deceiving 
Austria, as he deceived her at first to form the wretched 
Concordat with the Pope, which she has at last been driv- 
en to renounce or modify ; tempting her to believe that 
Hungary, a nation of brave, and gallant, and high-spirited 
men, can be crushed by force, instead of being conciliated 
by love ; a sort of infatuation which must arise from the 
deception of the W icked One ? If you turn to Spain, 
there to read the Bible is a civil crime and a religious 
heresy. To tell a man that Christ alone is the way to 
heaven is followed by imprisonment. In that land the 
Church of Rome seems to have found a last retreat, and 
to hold her mediaeval revels and to exercise her ultramon- 
tane tyranny untouched ; there civil liberty is a crime, re- 
ligious liberty is heresy ; and poor prisoners, men upright, 
just, and good, and loyal, are lingering out their lives in 
damp, dark dungeons, charged with no crime but this, that 
they insist; upon the right of worshipping their own God 
in the way that to them seems right. Turn to France, 
how disturbed is it still ! it seems as if Paris were the 
echoing centre of all Europe. I stated in the course of 
expositions of the Apocalypse that during the last vial, 
or rather the sixth vial, and at the beginning of the sev- 
enth, three unclean spirits go out like frogs, it is said, to 
deceive the nations of the earth — the very work in which 
Satan is here said to be engaged. And it has been ar- 
gued by students of prophecy, and almost demonstrated 
by Elliott in his Horse Apocalypticae, that as the three 
frogs were the national arms of France on the standard of 
Clovis and of Charlemagne, and the original national in- 



156 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



signia. the deceptive spirits that are to deceive and con- 
vulse the nations of the earth are to go out from Paris. 
"When we look at present complications we cannot help 
suspecting that deception is going on there, and ambition 
nursed and fostered in minds to whom it would be much 
better were it a stranger. If we pass on to Italy, it looks 
like a gleam of sunshine amidst the black clouds that cov- 
er Europe ; and yet Italy is surrounded with difficulties. 
Satan, who envied Paradise its happiness, envies Italy its 
resurrection, and its progress, and its rising greatness. 
If one look at Rome, the great centre of Italy, and at the 
poor unhappy Pope (and really one feels for him person- 
ally, for he is a kind, benevolent-hearted old man.) we 
cannot but see how bitterly deceived he is, when instead 
of rectifying abuses he is fulminating anathemas ; when in- 
stead of pouring blessings on the land he is issuing curse3 
against those that disturb him, and threatening them 
with all sorts of torments here and hereafter. And if we 
go across the Atlantic Ocean, what a scene is there at this 
moment ! America, our child — America, sprung from 
ourselves, the inheritor of much of our freedom, and re- 
taining ur literature, our language, our religion, and lib- 
erty ; what Christian, what Briton, will not grieve that 
that land, which we looked upon as our sister and ally in 
days of trouble, should be torn in twain ; and hearth 
should be set up against hearth, and home against home, 
and state against state : and the whole of thai magnificent 
empire in the agonies and throes of a terrible, if not a 
destructive revolution ! Is it therefore unreasonable, is it 
unwarrantable, to conclude that Satan is deceiving the na- 
tions of the earth, and leading them to that catastrophe to 
which the prophetic word so constantly points ? 



SATAN LOOSED FOR A LITTLE. 



157 



If you should ask how he deceives them, it seems to 
me very plain. He is persuading some that righteousness 
does not exalt a people ; that right is not might ; that 
truth is not the highest policy ; and that Christianity im- 
pedes, not increases, the prosperity of nations. He de- 
ceives them, by creating in the hearts of rulers ambitious 
desires ; by leading them to think that numbers, not mor- 
al excellence, is strength ; that war is their glory ; that 
the pruning-hook is more beautiful when shaped into the 
sword, and that the ploughshare is more glorious when it 
is turned into the spear ; and that camps and barracks, 
the dread necessity of nations, are really their glory, their 
beauty, and their excellence. Who can look abroad upon 
all the countries to which I have referred without seeing 
every king preparing for conflict, every capital turning in- 
to a camp, every nation rousing all its energies ; as if all 
saw the wave, the approaching wave of some terrible con- 
vulsion ; and each felt it his direst and most terrible ne- 
cessity to make ready for the crisis which he anticipates. 
Satan seems to be deceiving all the nations. Not only is 
he deceiving nations, but individuals also. He is teaching 
on the one hand that the Bible is an obsolete book ; that 
the Divine Persons that are spoken of in it were simple 
myths ; that it is a mere congeries of exaggerated notions 
of the imperfect and ignorant fishermen of Galilee ; and 
that you are not to trust to it as a light to your feet and a 
lamp to your path, but to what they call the inner light 
— a light kindled from beneath, till the heart is renewed ; 
and then there is a light revealed from above, but a light 
that shines in unison with the light of this sacred volume. 
On the other hand, he is deceiving people to trust in priests, 
in sacraments, in rites, in ceremonies; and their hearts 



158 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



depart from the living God. But we rejoice in this, that 
for a. thousand years (and these thousand years may not 
be fir distant,) he shall be bound ; though at the end of 
the thousand years — why I cannot explain ; why it should 
be I know not ; but I take what God says, and accept it 
as truth, adoring where I cannot understand, trusting 
what I cannot grasp, believing that to be true which God 
says, even when I cannot give the explanation why and 
wherefore ; — at the end of the thousand years, we are 
told, he shall be loosed for a little and go out to deceive 
the nations of the earth. 

The great difficulty that has been felt by thousands is, 
who are these nations of the earth ? I believe when 
Christ comes this earth shall undergo its baptism of fire, 
just as once it underwent its baptism by water ; I believe 
that all the dead in Christ shall be raised, and all the 
living in Christ shall be changed at the beginning of the 
thousand years. I have stated that all those magnificent 
predictions in Isaiah will then be actualized ; that then the 
mountain of the Lord's house shall be exalted above the 
mountains ; that then the desert shall rejoice, that the 
wilderness and the solitary place shall be made glad ; that 
the lion shall lie down with the lamb ; that there shall be 
no more death, nor tears, nor sickness, nor sorrow, but 
that all former things shall have passed away ; and a hap- 
py earth shall be the abode of a happy and a rejoicing 
people, with Christ personally manifest and revealed in 
the midst of them. Holding all this, and having as I 
think proved it, the difficulty occurs, who are these nations 
found in the four — literally in the four — corners of the 
earth who turn up at the end of the thousand years? 
Stranger still becomes the question when we notice that 



SATAN LOOSED FOR A LITTLE. 



159 



their multitude is as the sand of the sea in number. Some 
excellent Christians, who agree with me in every point I 
have stated heretofore, differ with me in this ; they think 
that on some outskirts of this world there are to be sin- 
ners during the millennial rest ; raised socially, physical- 
ly, morally, by the indirect light of Christianity, but not 
regenerated and Christian men. I confess I cannot under- 
stand this ; the difficulty of such a solution seems to me 
enormous. The explanation, therefore, which I have sug- 
gested, and which I candidly admit has not been accepted 
by many, and has also its difficulties, is this : we find that 
all the Christian dead are raised at the beginning of the 
millennium ; those that die enemies to the Cross, unre- 
generate, unbelievers, unsanctified, are raised from their 
graves at the end of the millennial economy. The first 
resurrection consists exculsively of believers ; the second 
resurrection, therefore, out of which believers have been 
gathered, is and must be, for it is so stated, the resurrec- 
tion of those whose names are not in the Lamb's book of 
life. And if you notice at the close of this chapter, where 
it speaks of the great white throne, we are told nothing 
about the sanctified and holy dead; it tells us: " I saw 
the dead, small and great, stand before God ; and the books 
were opened ; and another book was opened, which is the 
book of life ; and the dead were judged out of those 
things which were written in the books, according to their 
works." And then verse 15 : " And whosoever was not 
found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of 
fire." Thus we have here only the resurrection of those 
who are enemies to the Gospel. I well know the difficulty 
will occur to sensitive and benevolent minds — does it not 
seem hard, if these spirits are lost and ruined, to raise 



160 THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 

their bodies, to aggravate their sufferings, and add to their 
sorrow for ever ? The answer is, that we believe as men, 
and we are glorified as men — that is, soul and body. We 
reject the Gospel as men, and we are lost and ruined as 
men — that is, soul and body. Hence, then, if this last 
resurrection consist of those who have rejected the glori- 
ous Gospel of the Son of God, who have repudiated Christ 
as the only Saviour, may it not be that those that come 
from the four corners of the earth are the lost ones raised 
from the dead at the second resurrection, retaining all 
their antipathy to truth, all their hatred of the Saviour ; 
who shall, out of sheer desperation and malignant feeling, 
make this last assault — which is crushed in its birth : for 
the instant they make the assault fire descends from heaven, 
and utterly destroys them ; — may it not be, that just as 
the risen saints, risen believers, reign with Christ for a 
thousand years in joy and felicity, those who make this 
last assault are the risen unbelieving, who have resisted the 
truth, and make this final and unsuccessful effort to extin- 
guish it? You say, it is strange tbat they should do so ; 
and yet it is not strange. The Jews sinned against God 
amidst the most stupendous miracles ; they saw the pillar of 
fire march them through the nights in the desert ; they 
saw the pillar of cloud shade them from the intense heat 
in the day ; they saw the cloven ocean form a promenade 
for Israel, and collapse and become a grave for pursuing 
Pharaoh ; they heard the strains of Miriam as she cele- 
brated a grand deliverance ; and yet, in spite of miracles, 
in the midst of miracles and manifestations of the living 
God, the Jews sinned, apostatized, plunged into idolatry, 
and denied the God that led them through the desert ! So 
in the case of Satan himself; you might argue, how can 



SATAN LOOSED FOR A LITTLE. 



161 



Satan at the end of the thousand years attempt to do what 
he must know must be a failure ? The devil knows now 
that his whole policy must end in a gigantic failure ; he 
knows that success is impossible ; but it is just as much 
his nature to deceive as it is the nature of a bird to sing, 
or of a happy heart to unload its happiness in song ; it is 
the nature of the fallen archangel to do so. So if we- find 
that God's ancient people — at least called by his name 
— in the midst of stupendous miracles tempted him, dis- 
believed him, blasphemed him ; if we find that Satan, after 
the experience of six thousand years, persists in his old 1 
policy, and wields his old weapons, and tries his old plans, 
it is not unreasonable to suppose that the risen wicked, re- 
taining all their passions, appetites, desires, hatred, antip- 
athy, malignity, may make this last effort under the in- 
spiration of him who is the murderer, the liar, and the 
deceiver, from the beginning to the end. This may meet 
what is otherwise an inexplicable incident in that grand , 
panorama which begins with the thousand years, and con- 
tinues for ever and ever in blessedness, in beauty, and in 
joy. All that we can learn, so far as we have been able 
to cast any light upon it, is that at the end of the thousand 
years there is an interval of trouble : we, if we be Christ's 
people, shall not be scathed by it, for we are with him, our 
Prophet, our Priest, and our King, and no weapon formed 
against us can prosper ; the victory is certain ; the Prince 
of Peace is King of kings and Lord of lords. The awful 
thought — and it is I must say a most awful one — is that 
there shall be multitudes of the lost. Yet, if there be 
multitudes of the lost, it will be nothing in comparison of 
the vast multitudes of the saved. The vast majority of 
the human race will be saved ; a minority only will be 



162 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



lost. It is an awful thought that a minority should be 
lost; it is an awful thought that one immortal spirit should 
perish for ever and for ever. The thought is so dreadful 
that I do not wonder at men recoiling from it ; and if it 
were not asserted broadly, unmistakably in the Bible, I 
would not believe it. But we know too that angels, and 
Satan their leader, have been suffering in chains and dark- 
ness, and torment ever since they fell ; and they will suffer 
for ever and ever. We sometimes think it must make us 
unhappy that there should be anywhere near us such aw- 
ful sufferings. This only is certain, we shall not be un- 
happy in heaven. At present it ought to make us un- 
happy that there are several hundred criminals in Newgate, 
in Milbank Penitentiary, in the prison at Holloway. The 
palace of the . Queen is in the midst of prisons ; your 
places of business may be some of them very near New- 
gate — does it not make you often unhappy that there 
should be such a state of things within those dark, thick 
stone walls ? Does it not make you unhappy that there 
are dens, and cribs, and dungeons, poetically called homes, 
in every neighborhood where there is squalid misery, and 
hunger, and wretchedness, and destitution, and want, and 
where efforts to improve recoil sometimes in leaving them 
worse ? does not that make you unhappy ? Does it make 
the angels that are in heaven unhappy that a large ava- 
lanche of their number, a mighty landslip from glory, has 
plunged into the depths of hell ? It is not said it does so. 
All that we are sure of is, there shall be no tears, nor sor- 
row, nor grief in glory. What we now lament is that any 
human being should be the victim of so terrible, so endur- 
ing a calamity. But what should that teach us ? If it 
be true, if we cannot resist what is plainly written, the 



SATAN LOOSED FOH A LITTLE. 



163 



lesson like the duty is abundantly plain. Are you safe ? 
are you Christians ? If you are in a ship foundering at 
sea, you would try to save yourself and every passenger 
and sailor on board of that ship. If, therefore, you be- 
lieve that such a catastrophe as that which is here spoken 
of, and which is called the second death, and into which 
the devil and his angels, and all that have repudiated 
Christ, shall be cast for ever — if you believe this fearful 
but Scripture truth, take care that you are not in that 
number. And in the second place, let every man try to 
the utmost of his power, wherever his influence can reach, 
to be able on the margin of heaven to quote one whom he 
has been the means of rescuing from darkness and trans- 
lating into God's marvellous light. If we know the Sa- 
viour, what are we doing to make him known ? If we have 
tasted his salvation, what are we doing to spread it among 
others ? Instead of thinking of contingencies which we 
cannot explain, or trying to sound the depths of an agony 
which is unfathomable, let us lay aside speculations about 
a matter painful in one extreme, if glorious in- another ; 
and let us bind ourselves to instant duties, using our in- 
fluence, our wealth, our power to make known the un-. 
searchable riches of Christ. Let me ask, what are you 
doing in the church to which you belong, in the neighbor- 
hood in which you live, to bring souls to Christ ? Are 
you teaching any one child, are you helping any one 
school ? are you doing the utmost that you can to bring 
out of darkness them that are its victims, and to lessen the 
number of the lost by multiplying and increasing the 
numbers of the saved ? 

I have tried to explain this passage ; I admit the diffi- 
culties to be great ; but perhaps we are not so far distant 



164 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



from these great events ; and then what we know not now 
we are assured we shall know then. And if we belong to 
Christ's flock, and are among his people, and are trying, as 
I have told you, to lessen the number of the lost by in- 
creasing the aggregate of the saved, ours will be the bless- 

O Do O 

edness of Daniel, who tells us that " they that turn many 
to righteousness shall shine as the brightness of the firma- 
ment, and as the stars for ever and ever." 



THE GREAT WHITE THRONE. 



165 



LECTURE X. 

THE GREAT WHITE THRONE. 

We now see in the advancing panorama a sublime and 
solemn spectacle. God help us to read it aright. 

" And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose 
face the earth and the heaven fled away ; and there was found no 
place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before 
God ; and the books were opened ; and another book was opened, 
which is the book of life ; and the dead were judged out of those 
things which were written in the books, according to their works. 
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it ; and death and hell 
delivered up the dead which were in them ; and they were judged 
every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast 
into the lake of fh'e. This is the second death. And whosoever was 
not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." — 
Revelation xx. 11 — 15. 

We have seen that the resurrection consists of two dis- 
tinct parts : the first, which takes place when Christ 
comes, is the resurrection of all believers from Adam to 
the last hour; the second, which is here described, is the 
resurrection of the rest of the dead, who lived not till 
the thousand years were finished. Referring to the for- 
mer, he says : " Blessed and holy is he that hath part in 
the first resurrection ; on such the second death hath no 



166 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



power." This benediction would imply that on the rest, 
that do not then rise and reign, the second death will have 
power. This leads to the inference that the great white 
throne, Mr. Elliott thinks, may be erected at the com- 
mencement of and continue throughout the millennial 
reign, and that judgment may proceed during the period 
of that reign ; and therefore that the day of judgment is 
not a literal day, but a period or day of a thousand years. 
Yet he seems to doubt whether this position can be made 
good, and whether the old interpretation may not after all 
be the better one ; that the great white throne is set up 
chronologically, just as it is placed in the record, at the 
close of the millennial epoch ; at which he sees the gath- 
ering of the dead, small and great. But who are these 
dead ? They are not the dead that are saved ; they are 
not the happy and the holy dead that have part in the 
first resurrection ; they are not those on whom the second 
death has no power ; there is not one word said in this 
part about any of these appearing at the great white 
throne. It is true there are the small and great ; there 
is the opening of the books ; there is the opening of the 
book of life ; there is the account of those judged accord- 
ing to their works ; not condemned by a decree, but treat- 
ed according to their merits ; there are seen death and 
hell giving up the dead ; and then there is the sentence 
in the 15th verse, as if just the antithesis to what is re- 
corded in the 5th, or first resurrection, on those upon 
whom the second death hath no power ; we read: " And 
whosoever was not found written in the book of life was 
cast into the lake of fire." It seems therefore that the 
rest of the dead (it is a very fearful thought) are those 
that have rejected the great salvation. I do not dare to 



THE GREAT WHITE THRONE. 



167 



number among them all the heathen, of whom I do not 
assert that all will be lost ; I would not number among 
them all the tribes that never heard the glad sound of the 
glorious Gospel, or venture uncharitably and unwarrant- 
ably to pronounce that these will all be lost. But those 
that surround this great white throne, whoever they be. 
or whatever be their number, are not those that are in the 
first resurrection, nor those on whom the second death 
has no power ; they are found not written in the Lamb's 
book of life, and are rejected of God for ever. It is a 
very sad fact that there should be a single human being 
lost for ever. It is a loss that no analysis of ours can 
express ; a loss that no imagination of ours can grasp ; a 
loss, however, that is possible. " A lost soul," says the 
Rev. Robert Hall, the eminent Baptist minister ; " what 
tears should be wept at such a spectacle ! Were the 
heavens to be covered with crape, and the earth with 
mourning, or were the whole of nature to become animate 
and vocal, would it be possible for it to utter a groan too 
deep or a cry too piercing to express the magnitude of 
such a catastrophe ? ' ' And yet, alas ! the catastrophe 
does occur. The lesson for us is to take care that we be 
not numbered among those that are in the second resur- 
rection ; the lost are suicides ; they are not killed, but 
self-slain ; they would not be saved, and therefore they 
must eat the fruits of what they themselves have sown. 

The rest of the dead, then, appear before that judgment- 
seat, called the great white throne. For Christians, there 
is no judgment day ; the judgment morn is not for the trial 
of Christians ; already they are justified, already they are 
acquitted. What does the 8th chapter of the Epistle to the 
Romans say ? " There is no condemnation/" that is, there 



168 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



is no judgment-seat, there is no trial, u to them that are in 
Christ Jesus." " He that belie veth on the Son of God 
shall not come into judgment," or into condemnation. 
This therefore is that very tribunal to which Abraham 
refers when he says: M Shall not the Judge of all the 
earth do right?" to which the wise man refers when he 
says: "God shall bring every work into judgment, and 
every secret thing, whether it be good or evil ; " it is that 
very judgment to which Daniel refers when in the 7th 
chapter of his prophecy he tells us that the thrones were 
set, H and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment 
was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure 
wool ; his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels 
as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth 
from before him ; thousand thousands ministered unto him, 
and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him : 
the judgment was set, and the books were opened. I be- 
held them because of the voice of the great words which 
the horn spake ; I beheld even till the beast was slain, 
and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame." 
Nothing about acquittal ; all about judicial wrath poured 
upon those who obey not God, neither have believed the 
Gospel of his Son. 

In this vision which swept across the iEgean Sea, and 
which John from his stand-point on Patmos saw, be be- 
held first of all " a great white throne; " great, for the 
greatest and the most awful issues flow from it ; great, for 
a great multitude is there ; great, for it is what the proph- 
ets call the great day of the Lord ; great, for angels, thou- 
sands and ten thousands, are present, the witnesses of the 
scene ; and his own people, the bride, the redeemed out of 
every kindred, and every people, and every tongue, as- 



THE GREAT WHITE THRONE. 



169 



sessors with him on the judgment throne. These are rep- 
resented as saying : " Just and true are thy ways. thou 
King of saints/' It is not only a great throne, but a 
white throne ; every deed of darkness is there revealed in 
its intense splendor ; every thought that is evil projects 
its shadow on it : there is nothing hid in the past that 
shall not be revealed there. JSo meanness shall conceal the 
little ; no majesty shall carry beyond its control the great. 
There shall be neither cowl, nor phylactery, nor robe, nor 
crown, nor coronet, nor dignity : but naked, responsible, 
and immortal, they that are there stand before the great 
white throne. 

He speaks next of him that sitteth on it. Who is he ? 
None else than our Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ. 
All Scripture assures us that he is to be the J udge. For 
instance : " The Father judgeth no man, but hath com- 
mitted all judgment to the Son." Again : " This Christ 
is ordained of God to be the Judge of the living and the 
dead." And again : " When the Son of man shall come 
in his glory, and all his holy angels with him, he shall sit 
on the throne of his judgment." We therefore find that 
he who sits here is the Lord Jesus Christ. What a start- 
ling contrast will be presented to them that crucified him ! 
He that was despised and rejected of men is here disclosed 
as the Judge of all the earth. He that was constrained 
to say, " The foxes of the earth have holes, and the birds 
of the air have nests : but the Son of man hath not where 
to lay his head, ' ' is there the throned Judge of the uni- 
verse. He for whom the world found a cross and the 
stranger a grave is now exalted King of kings, the dis- 
penser of irreversible issues, fixing a destiny that shall 
have no end for ever and for ever. If the Lord Jesus 



170 TUB GREAT e0N3MMATIG&. 

Christ is to be the Judge, I need no other evidence that 
he is God. I could conceive the absence of God from 
creation, and delegated power calling worlds into being ; 
but I cannot conceive a delegated being exercising the aw- 
ful prerogatives that belong to sitting on the judgment 
throne. If God surely is anyw T here, it is on the judgment- 
seat ; and therefore the fact that Jesus is to be the Judge 
of the living and the dead implies that he is God over all, 
blessed for ever. 

We find next described the effect of his appearance upon 
that throne : " From whose face the earth and the heaven 
fled away." What does this mean? The new heaven 
and the new earth have already superseded the old. It 
therefore means that all the distinctions, the grandeur, 
the magnificence of created things shall pale and sink 
down in the presence of a majesty that covers all and of 
a glory that puts out all ; the glory of him who is King 
of kings and Lord of lords. We have similar allusions in 
the Apocalypse. For instance, when the seventh seal was 
opened, we read that the heavens departed like a scroll ; 
and every mountain and island was moved away ; and yet 
the history of the future that succeeds this shows that it 
was not a material removal, but an overwhelming and ab- 
sorbing presence that made all these disappear from man's 
eyes. We read also under the seventh vial that every is- 
land and every mountain fled away as recorded in the 16th 
chapter ; and yet after that we find the earth still in exis- 
tence. We read in the Psalms, what casts light upon it : 
" The sea saw it, and fled ; " that does not mean that the 
sea disappeared, but that nature, agitated and overpowered, 
retired and shrunk before the majesty and glory of a pres- 
ent God. 



THE GREAT WHITE THRONE. 



171 



We have thus seen the great throne, the great white 
throne, and the Son of God, the Saviour, seated «on it ; 
we have the effect of his appearance ; all nature re- 
treating into shadow before that sunburst that awes earth 
by its magnificence and overwhelms it by its splendor. 
We have next the subjects of this judgment. They are, 
as we have seen, " the rest of the dead ; " those that are 
not " blessed; " those that are not exempt from the sec- 
ond death ; those, therefore, that have rejected and de- 
spised the Saviour; those, in short, described by Jude 
when he says: 11 Enoch also, the seventh from Adain, 
prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with 
ten thousands of his saints ; " now what does he do ? 
Here is the great white throne : "To execute judgment 
upon all. and to convince all that are ungodly among them 
of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly com- 
mitted, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sin- 
ners have spoken against him." In other words, it is the 
judgment upon the five foolish virgins who, when the Re- 
deemer comes, are shut out — he knows them not ; the 
judgment upon the man who received one talent, and 
who came to Christ and presented it laid up in a napkin, 
saying, " I knew that thou wert an hard taskmaster, reap- 
ing where thou hast not sown ; here is that that is thine 
own;" he said to him, "Depart; cast the unprofitable 
servant into outer darkness." Here, in other words, is the 
picture of those to whom the Saviour shall say : u Depart, 
ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and 
his angels : for I was an hungered, and ye gave me no 
meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink : I was a 
stranger, and ye took me not in ; " " and these shall go 
away into everlasting punishment," that is, the rest of 



172 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



the dead ; i: but the righteous," that is, those already in- 
vited iti to his kingdom,^" shall go into everlasting life." 
And therefore we infer, not one Christian is found in the 
last group surrounding the great white throne ; not one 
believer is there placed under judgment. The small and 
the great, according to the distinctions of this world, are 
there ; the black and the white, the bond and the free, the 
great and the insignificant, are all there, amidst a light in 
which the least sin will be seen to project its dark shadow; 
and amid a silence in. which each shall hear the pulse of 
his own henrt, and trembling, and conscience-smitten, and 
all reminiscences accusing, these shall go away into ever- 
lasting punishment. No mundane distinction is then and 
there of any value ; neither learning, nor talent, nor geni- 
us, nor power, is of any avail. Pharaoh shall come forth 
from his pyramidal tomb, and the dead from beneath the 
greensward in village churchyards shall come forth, and 
shall stand before that throne ; and they shall then feel 
the truth of what the preacher often taught and the hearer 
often despised : " How shall we escape if we neglect so 
great salvation ? " 

We read as the next act in this great and solemn assize 
that the books were opened. What are these books ? They 
are part of the imagery that John saw ; each image meant 
to teach a definite and impressive lesson. The first book 
that will probably be opened will be the book of the history 
of the church, the world, and mankind. It will be seen on 
its page, the gleaming page of that marvellous volume, that 
all the patronage of the world never could sustain what 
was false; and that all the persecution of heathen em- 
perors and papal inquisitors never could extinguish one 



THE GREAT WHITE THRONE. 173 



precious truth, or arrest by a hairbreadth the march of 
the kingdom and the Gospel of the Son of God. It will 
be seen from that book, that marvellous record of human 
history, that the truths that shot forth from Patmos, or 
emerged from the Mamertine prison at Rome, or rose upon 
the smoke of the fires that consumed the martyrs, were 
power, and might, and progress ; and that all that opposed 
them resisted in vain, or resisted only to their own irrepar- 
able ruin. There shall be opened at that great white 
throne, in the second place, the book of human experience. 
What will that experience in each individualbe ? It will 
be this — that wherever! did right I was worth nothing; 
that wherever I did wrong I was weak as I was worthless. 
The experience that will be reflected from that shining 
page, having its counterpart in every individual heart, will 
be — all beauty fades ; all riches take wings and flee 
away ; all that men struggle for, and quarrel about ; all 
that men consume their strength and their energies in 
seeking to attain, are worthless as the baseless wreck of a • 
vision ; and that truth, and righteousness, and 'love, and 
peace, and liberality, and virtue, and joy, have been the 
music that accompanied the march of God's people ; and 
the best and the noblest, as they have proved the most 
lasting elements in the experience of mankind. One cup 
of cold water that you gave to a Christian ; one mite that 
you gave to the least of Christ's brethren for his sake, 
will be a reminiscence at the last day more resplendent 
than a fixed star; whereas all the wealth, and the honor, 
and the power and greatness of this present world will be 
found to have been — what the wise man long ago pro- 
nounced them to be — vanity and vexation of spirit. At 



174 THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 

that day too, and before that great white throne, will be 
opened the book of human character. This is the true 
ledger ; the just and unadorned biography. There is the 
chart that points out shoals, and reefs, and quicksands ; 
the log-book that tells you of the distance you have run 
and the speed with which you have run it ; the diary in 
which nothing is entered that is unreal, but on which, 
with all the speed of the telegraph, has been struck every 
hour the deeds, the thoughts, the sympathies, the hopes, 
the desires of the human heart. The great life journey 
of the human heart is there : how are you writing it out ? 
If you are not writing on the heart, it is being written on ; 
and what is inscribed upon the heart will at that day and 
at that hour be reproduced in all its clearness. At that 
day too will be produced the book of conscience ; and the 
lost at that hour will feel — we did this against the pro- 
tests of conscience ; we refused to do that, notwithstand- 
ing the invitations and the urgings of conscience ; and 
they will feel that its accusations outnumber by millions 
its best afid its most plausible excuses ; and that they will 
have not one word to say ; but like the man who refused 
the wedding garment, and when the master came in and 
asked him why he was seated there without what he had 
only to lay his hand upon as he entered, and put on, he 
was speechless. What a strange thought ! the saved in 
glory will break forth into waves of song, and thanks- 
giving, and praise ; the lost in misery will be speechless ; 
they will see their doom to be so terribly deserved ; and 
awful as it is, it must be deserved, or God would not in- 
flict it ; or rather as they would not be saved, God has 
left them, to eat of the fruit of their own doings ; and 



THE GREAT WHITE THRONE. 



175 



now they are lost, sunk to misery, just as a stone sinks by 
the law of gravitation to the earth. It is the nature they 
have cultivated, it is the course they have deliberately 
adopted. Oh it is much better, as I have repeatedly urg- 
ed, if instead of trying to show that the future of the 
lost is not so blank, that its duration is not so long, that 
after all it is not such a bad place, till it is diluted into a 
sort of temporary purgatory — instead of all that non- 
sense, worse than nonsense, for if God's word is to decide 
the matter it is not true j if we tell you that there is not 
a human being who hears the Gospel that need be lost ; 
that at this moment heaven with all its magnificence is 
offered to all without money, without promise, without 
condition, without pledge ; and that it is the very sim- 
plicity of this sublime offer that makes numbers stumble 
at the threshold, and think or feel it is too good, it is too 
simple to be true. 

If earnestly, in the depths of your hearts, you have 
accepted Christ as your Saviour, you are saved. Every 
one that can say honestly — I am not speaking of any 
mysterious or transcendental experience ; I am speaking 
of a simple proposition, to be taken in all the simplicity 
with which I utter it — I have committed myself, with 
all my sins and my virtues, and my soul and all its des- 
tinies this very day to the blood of Christ to be ransom- 
ed by it ; to the righteousness of Christ to be covered by 
it ; to the care of Christ to be tended by it ; if there be 
any truth in the Bible at all, that man is a Christian ; and 
if a Christian, you shall never stand before this great 
white throne : you shall not come among those who are 
not written in the Lamb's book of life ; you shall never 



176 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



taste the second death. Instead of trying to dilute the 
misery of the lost, oh try to preach the glory and the 
riches of Christ ! try to preach this — that it is his grief 
in heaven, it is his rebuke to you, it is the sorrow of his 
soul, if that sorrow penetrates the inner sanctuary where 
he is, that he has done so much for you, and that you 
will not take him at his word ; that he has suffered so 
much for you, and you will not trust him ; and that he 
offers to you all that you need to make you happy here 
and happy hereafter, and you will not have it. It is only 
under the splendors of an open heaven, accessible to every 
human being, that I dare try to portray the shadows 
of that hell that has no termination. I would not ven- 
ture even to touch the theme, or to say one word about it, 
if I felt that on any one who hears the Gospel there was 
a crushing doom that drives him to the depths of hell in 
spite of his own will. If I so believed, I should be si- 
lent, that I might not augment the misery which I could 
not avert. But I speak strongly because I am persuaded 
on the surest foundations that no decree damns any man ; 
that there is no seal of reprobation upon any man's soul ; 
but that we may all be saved if we will, and that not one 
of us need be lost unless he so elects. The elect are all 
that will, and the non-elect are all that will not ; and you 
are not incapable of being saved, but you are unwilling ; 
and what men call want of power is simply want of will ; 
and want of will means simply, I will not take God at 
his word, and I will not believe him, and I will take my 
own way, and try to brave the issue, let that issue be 
what it niay. The books will be opened ; the book of 
Providence and experience ; and lastly, the book of life 



THE GREAT WHITE THRONE. 



177 



will be opened, and whosoever is not found written in that 
book of life is cast into the lake of fire. 

It may be asked, where will all these come from ? 
Here is the record of them. The sea, the grave of na- 
tions, will open its restless waters, and a scene of awful 
„ and terrific grandeur will be witnessed there ; some of the 
dead that perished by shipwreck ; thousands that perished 
in naval battles ; thousands that have slept with the sea- 
weeds for their shroud, and the chime of the ocean's waves 
for their requiem of a thousand years ; the roll of that 
last trump shall penetrate the depths of the desert sea, and 
every sleeping one there, if a Christian, shall hear at the 
first resurrection, and come forth to eternal joy ; and 
every sleeping one who is there who is not a Christian 
shall come forth and be judged according to his works be- 
fore the great white throne. And not only will the sea 
give up the dead that are in it, but earth also shall give 
up the dead that are in it. Wherever man is buried, 
there will the sound of the resurrection trumpet reach, 
and he shall come forth, either in the first resurrection to 
reign with Christ, or he shall come forth in the second to 
receive retribution for the deeds that have been evil, and 
which he has done in the body. The sands of the desert 
shall roll aside, and disclose their dead ; the great tombs 
in the Pyramids shall open their stony lips, and send forth 
their dead ; the mouldering remains of priests and royal 
ones that you may see in the British Museum, where they 
are looked at as curiosities, wrapped in royal robes, cover- 
ed with mysterious hieroglyphics ; every atom of that dust 
shall be quickened, and they too shall come forth, either 
to be numbered with Christ's people in glory everlasting, 

8* 



178 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



or to stand at the great white throne, and be treated ac- 
cording to their deeds. Hell also, we are told, gives up 
the dead that are in it. Hell is not here the word for the 
place of torment ; it is in the original Hades ; the place 
of souls now disembodied. Your near ones and your dear 
ones that have fallen asleep in Christ are divided ; their 
bodies slumber in the silent grave, their souls are in 
Hades ; that is, they are not in the place of the lost, they 
are not in the final place of felicity and blessedness, which 
is yet a future on earth ; but they are in a state of joy and 
felicity up to the measure of their capacity. The present 
heaven, or condition, or place of disembodied souls is not 
a locality, but a geographical expression; it has often 
impressed itself upon me, and I am persuaded it is true, 
that the souls of those that have preceded us to heaven are 
in another spiritual condition not in a distant star or a 
far-off orb in the universe ; and that in all probability we 
are surrounded by troops of glorious spirits, who have fin- 
ished the fight, who have entered into joy ; who look upon 
U3 with intense sympathy and interest, and watch for the 
issues of that conflict on which one of two eternities de- 
pends — the great white throne, or the first resurrection 
of all that believe. Those souls that are now separate 
from the body shall all come forth ; those bodies that are 
in the sea shall all emerge ; those that are in graves, and 
mausolea, and tombs, shall come forth; and whosoever 
shall not be found written in the book of life, not being 
found there by reason of the character he bears, is cast 
into the lake of fire. What is the meaning of that ex- 
pression we know not ; all that we know is, that from the 
first verse of the Gospel to the last verse of the Apoca- 



THE GREAT WHITE THRONE. 



179 



lypse there is a bright destiny and a heavy doom, a heaven 
and a hell, a place for all that receive Christ, and consent 
to be saved by him, and a place for all that reject and de- 
spise, and denounce him, and will not submit to be saved 
— these are facts which Scripture repeatedly asserts : and 
it is no use for us to attempt to doubt or to deny them. 

What do we learn from all this ? First, that the only 
thing that survives the grave, whether it be among the 
saved or the lost, is character. " He that is just, let him 
be just still, that is the saved ; "he that is unjust, let 
him be unjust still." We must lay down at the grave's 
mouth all the adventitious distinctions of life. All mun- 
dane inequalities must lie levelled in the grave. We 
must appear either in the first resurrection or at the great 
white throne without pomp, or riches, or power, or influ- 
ence, with nothing but immortality, responsibility, and 
character surviving. Secondly, if this be fact, what a 
momentous thought, that character is generated here 
which determines our lot for ever ! You are now laying 
on immortal and indelible colors. There is not a child 
that walks through the streets that is not catching influ- 
ences that will be reproduced at the last day It is one 
of the gravest* reasons why we should take an interest in 
the instructions, education, and improvement of the young, 
that left to themselves the impressions which they catch 
are downward and destructive ; but brought under the in- 
fluence of a Christian school, and the lessons of the Word 
of God, and the example of a kind and a pious, and a 
Christian teacher, they receive impressions that will outlive 
the last fire, and shine with the brightness of the stars 
and of the firmanent for ever and ever. I am perfectly 



180 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



persuaded of this, that whatever be our hopes about the 
old — if our impressions upon the old are superficial, and 
our efforts to recover them so often unsuccessful, this does 
not apply to the young. 



THE GLORIOUS COMPANY. 



181 



LECTURE XL 

THE GLORIOUS COMPANY. 

We get here a glimpse of the inner glory. We catch a 
few rajs of its blessedness and fulness. 

" After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could 
number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood 
before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and 
palms in their hands," fyc. — Revelation vii. 9-17. 

One seems to tarnish this exquisite picture by trying to 
expound it. The poet Burns, great for his exquisite 
thoughts, if pitiable for his sins and sorrows, said he never 
could read this passage without the tears trickling down 
his cheeks. There is music in the words the most rich, 
suggesting feelings the most touching ; and enough in the 
photograph itself, taken by the sunbeams of the Sun of 
Righteousness from an original actually present, to move, 
fascinate, and charm. It is after the sealing of those who 
did not unite with the dominant apostacy that the seer in 
Patmos, that is, John, says : " I beheld, and lo," what he 
scarcely expected to see in heaven, " a great multitude 
that no man could number." What a happy thought that 
heaven will not be a coterie ! nor will it be a few ; but a 
multitude so great that human arithmetic will fail to 



182 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



count and to number it ; many in that multitude we did 
not expect, in our uncharitableness ; and some -wanting 
that in our misapprehension we made sure of finding 
there. But whether we discover these mistakes or not, it 
will be avast multitude. We know some of the elements, 
the reasonable and scriptural elements, of that multitude. 
I have already said all children dying in infancy are saved. 
They may be the children of Hindoos, of Mahometans, of 
Pagans ; the children of Baptists, of anti-pedo Baptists 
or pedo Baptists ; without exception they are saved. I 
can prove it I think from Scripture, and it is therefore 
not mere fancy. If that be true, and half the human 
race die before they reach ten or eleven years of age, one 
can see here one great component element of that vast 
multitude that no man can number. But we see in every 
age an increasing number of them that fear God. It is 
quite true there is a great multitude that make no profes- 
sion ; apparently the narrow path is trod by few ; but 
there may be flowers in the desert that we do not see ; 
there may be sunshine beyond the mists of our horizon 
that we cannot detect; there may be precious stones where 
we discover only the dust, the unclean dust, of this present 
world. I should be sorry to think what Scripture does 
not warrant, that all the heathen will be lost ; I dare not 
infer from the Bible that the vast multitudes of Hindoos 
and Mahometans will be lost for ever. If sa^ed, it must 
be by the name of Christ ; but God may have secret modes 
of applying the efficacy of that name to the souls of them 
that never heard it ; and that we may meet in the realms 
of glory multitudes who never heard of the name by the 
efficacy of which they are saved. I do not say that this 
in the least degree interferes with or ought to dilute our 



THE GLORIOUS COMPANY. 



183 



duty, which is to go and preach the Gospel to every crea- 
ture ; but certainly we are not warranted by that commis- 
sion in forming the awful and sorrowful inference that all 
who have never heard the Gospel are necessarily lost. I 
believe also that there are Christians even in the Church 
of Rome, notwithstanding that dreadful and overshadow- 
ing apostacy. There is many a true Christian in it in spite 
of it, not of it. Who ha3 not read of the excellent and 
devoted Pascal ? who can doubt the piety of Fenelon ? 
who can deny the piety of Quesnel? who can doubt the 
true conversion of Martin Boos, the priest who lived and 
died in the Church of Rome, protesting against it, and 
yet afraid to abjure it? Take all these elements into 
your calculation, and you will see nothing very extravagant 
in the grand words of the seer on the isle of the JEgean 
Sea: "I beheld a great multitude which no man could 
number." That multitude was composed of all nations. 
Our nation occupies the highest place amid the nations 
of the earth ; but it has not a monopoly of Christians. 
There are Christians in France, Christians in Germany • 
Christians who worship in modes that we may not like, and 
who are defaced by errors from which we have happily, 
thanks be to God ! been made free. u And kindreds, and 
people, and tongues." I do not believe there will be only 
one language in heaven. Originally there was only one 
language ; and if one wanted to have a proof of the unity 
of descent of the human family, one might find it by the 
study of languages. Dr. Wiseman, a very able scholar, 
though a very mistaken professor of Christianity, states 
in his able and learned work called " The Connection of 
Science with Revealed Religion," that it is the unanimous 
conclusion of scholars on the continent of Europe that all 



184 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



the languages of the earth gave abundant evidence of a 
common origin, while all retain the irrefragable proofs of 
some great rupture in their history : that great rupture 
too^ place, of course, at the division of tongues in Babel. 
But to show that we need not expect there will be one 
tongue in heaven only, we have to recollect what grace 
does. It does not simply annihilate the effects of the fall, 
it overrules them, and turns them to higher ends. The 
original condition of mankind was one tongue ; sin intro- 
duced a fracture into that tongue, and split it into many 
dialects. Grace will not reduce all into one tongue again, 
but it will consecrate many tongues, laden with the name 
and vocal with the praises of Him who is all and in all. 
Therefore many tongues. " And they stood before the 
throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes," 
the explanation of which we shall see by-and-by, " and 
palms," the symbols of victory. " in their hands." 

Now one of the elders, it is said, asked him, " What 
are these which are arrayed in white robes ? " Suppose 
an elder, or an ancient, which is the meaning of the word, 
standing on the suburbs of the celestial city ; and seeing 
ascending, winding like a serpent of infinite, or rather in- 
calculable length, a white-robed procession that seems to 
climb the starry steeps of glory ; and never having seen 
such a procession before, and knowing nothing of its com- 
ponent elements, he asks the question, Who are these ? 
What are they ? We have no such people here ; all are 
angels that never fell. Whence then came these, and 
what are they ? It implies they were not natives, they 
were immigrants, they were colonists coming home ; and 
therefore having never seen them, and not being able to 
explain the strange and startling phenomenon, he asks the 



THE GLORIOUS COMPANY. 



185 



question, Who can they be ? Tell me their marvellous 
story. They present an aspect so different from anything 
that we have here that I should like to hear the story of 
their march, the antecedents of their history, and what 
they are, and how they came to be clothed with these white 
robes. Then the answer is given : ' ' And he said to me, 
These are they which came out of great tribulation, and 
have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood 
of the Lamb." Eirst of all. then, we learn that the in- 
habitants of the New Jerusalem were born in a fallen 
world ; they came out of great tribulation. Where only 
is tribulation ? - Only where sin is : it is the offspring of 
sin. And therefore those who enter were born in a fallen 
world, children of wrath, just as we are. That is the first 
feature. And the second feature is that they were sinners. 
How else could they require to wash their robes, and make 
them white in the blood of the Lamb, if they were not ? 
And one sinner admitted there is as remarkable as ten 
millions of sinners admitted there. If God can admit 
one sinner into the better country, he can also admit mil- 
lions on millions of sinners ; and if you can show me one 
instance of a sinner saved, you show me a precedent for 
the salvation of many sinners. They were also sufferers ; 
it is said they came out of great tribulation. That man 
who has most of the sunshine, and least of the shadow of 
this world's troubles, has the faintest signature that he is 
a son of God and an heir with Christ Jesus. I do not 
know a more constant mark of those that are the heirs of 
glory than this, that they have passed through much trib- 
ulation. There is a needs be, or it would not be so. 
;t Our light affliction," says the apostle, " is not worthy 
to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed ; 



186 THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 

and our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh 
out for us a far more exceeding, even an eternal weight of 
glory." I do not say we are to court affliction ; that is a 
very different thing ; but if we are God's children, rest 
assured we shall meet with it somewhere. It may be the 
sting in the heart that no hand can reach and pluck out. 
It may be the shadow on the mind which no sunshine of 
this world can scatter. It may be pinching poverty ; it 
may be losses and bereavements ; it may be crosses that 
the world cannot see, and griefs that the world cannot 
know, or reproaches the world delights to fling ; but in 
some shape, by some way, of some duration, you will be 
the children of suffering if you be the children of God. 
" If needs be, ye are in trouble through manifold tempta- 
tions ; and if ye be without chastisement, then are ye not 
sons." But these troubles, whatever they be, will not be 
so heavy, so numerous, so long continued as the devil 
would make them ; and they will not be so light, so few, 
so short, as our own poor flesh and blood would like them ; 
but they will just be what God sees to be most expedient 
for us. But mark another feature in this group ; for I 
only touch upon each point as I pass along : they came 
out of the great tribulation ; they were all in it, but not 
one was overwhelmed by it ; they were plunged into that 
sea, but not one sunk in it. It is the mark of a Christian, 
therefore, that his troubles only lift him nearer to God, 
and that his most poignant griefs bring him to Him who 
is able to sweeten, to mitigate, and sanctify the sorrow, 
and make it a baptism of refreshment, not the means and 
the element of his destruction and his ruin. They came 
out of great tribulation. 

Then mark what their condition is now : " They came 



THE GLORIOUS COMPANY. 



187 



out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and 
made them white in the blood of the Lamb ; therefore are 
they before the throne of God." How did they attain this 
happy condition, this glorious character ? First, most of 
them were martyrs ; but they attained to heaven and hap- 
piness not by their own blood ; it is not said they washed 
their robes and made them white in their own blood ; if it 
had been so, then human suffering had been the way to 
heavenly glory. And in the next place, it is not said that 
the tribulation out of which they came was the baptism 
that made them meet for heaven. They came out of great 
tribulation ; but it is not added that that tribulation was a 
claim to glory. No tears from the eye of the penitent 
can wash away the very least transgression ; no baptism, 
even of fire, can purify the heart and sanctify the nature. 
A martyr's blood has no efficacy nor virtue in it ; a peni- 
tent's tears have no expiatory excellence in them. The 
martyr's blood cannot be the expiation of his own sin ; the 
penitent's tears cannot wash away the least transgression 
of the shortest life. Nor is it said they reached this hap- 
py state by their own < doings. These robes they wore, so 
far from being purified and brightened by themselves, 
needed to be washed. The robe they wore is used as the 
symbol of the character in which they were presented. 
Now these robes were not woven by themselves, nor pur- 
chased by thems'elves, nor washed in their tears, nor made 
white in their own blood ; but it is said they were washed 
in the blood of the Lamb. And I need not add that their 
right to heaven could not be in any sense their baptism. 
Some people in the present day fancy that baptism has an 
expiatory or regenerative vitality or virtue. But strange 
to say, if it be so, there is not the least allusion to it. 



188 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



There is no regenerative efficacy in blood, in tears, in bap- 
tism, or in any institution that man can appoint or that 
the church possesses. Then what was it that purified their 
robes? The answer is : " These are they which came out 
of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made 
them white in the blood of the Lamb." Now why should 
that blood purify ? Because it has a virtue that no 
martyr's blood ever possessed — it is expiatory. The only 
expiatory element in the universe is the blood of Christ. 
Your death may be a death of intense agony ; it may be a 
sacrifice paid to a noble and a sublime cause ; but in no 
man's death and in no man's suffering is there the least 
element that can be pronounced expiatory or atoning in 
the sight of God ; it is not possible. Then why should 
Christ's blood be so ? Because he was God in our nature ; 
satisfying as God, suffering as man, presenting an atone- 
ment so complete that it needs no addition, and it can bear 
none. An angel's tears or a martyr's blood would only 
pollute those glorious robes. Nothing can make them 
clean but one grand element ; and that man who looks for 
heaven, and for a right, and franchise, and title to heaven 
only through the blood of Christ, never, never will be 
disappointed. " They washed their robes and made them 
white in the blood of the Lamb." How truly does this 
justify the language of the prophet : " Though your sins 
be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ; though they 
be red like crimson, they shall be as wool ! " Now here 
is the right to it, the blood of Christ alone : ' ' They wash- 
ed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the 
Lamb." Mark well the illative that follows; it is im- 
mediately added : " Therefore, or on account of this, are* 
they before the throne." Why are they before the throne ? 



THE GLORIOUS COMPANY. 189 

Because they have washed their robes, and made them 
white in the blood of the Lamb. The whole ground of 
their acceptance is the atoning and the meritorious efficacy 
of the blood of Christ. But, some one says, how can that 
blood touch us ? Do you mean to say that literally we 
must be sprinkled with it ? That would be absurd. The 
Roman soldier that pierced Christ's heart with a spear was 
probably sprinkled with that blood, but he died a crimi- 
nal still ; and the Jews that shouted, 11 Not this man, but 
Barabbas ! " probably were sprinkled with his blood, but 
they died criminals still. And if it were true that what 
they show in one of the churches in Belgium were the 
very blood of Christ, if I were to touch it it would have 
no efficacy; if it were sprinkled upon you it would not be 
of the least value. Then you say, why employ this lan- 
guage ? I answer, the blood is the life ; the shedding of 
that blood was the death ; and when 1 speak of washing 
our robes in the blood of the Lamb I use a scriptural meta- 
phor, simply denoting that with my whole heart's trust I 
look for heaven and everlasting joy only, exclusive^, on 
this ground, that He who knew no sin was made sin for me 
who had done nothing but sin, that I should be made the 
righteousness of God by him, who had done all righteous- 
ness for me. And hence those phrases constantly employ- 
ed in Scripture, such as — we are justified by Christ's 
righteousness ; we are saved through Christ's blood ; we 
have redemption by his blood, even the forgiveness of sins ; 
the blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin ; they washed 
their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, 
are all sacrificial language used to impress more vividly a 
great moral truth, namely, that Christ suffered in my stead, 
clothed with my sins, and was smitten, that I, represented 



190 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



by him, clothed in his righteousness, might be acquitted, 
absolved, and justified by him. My sins on him were his 
death, and his righteousness on me is my life. My sins 
on him, not in him, brought him to a cross ; his righteous- 
ness on me, not in me, will lift me to a crown of glory. 
When Christ cried upon the cross, 11 It is finished ! " there 
was nothing in him worthy of that death ; when I shall 
be admitted into glory everlasting there will be nothing in 
me worthy of that glory. My sins on him, not in him, 
brought him to the grave ; his righteousness on me, not 
in me, will lift me to glory. If you can feel that truth ; 
if it ceases to be a dogma outside, and can be cherished, 
and held fast, and grasped, and lived on, and fed on by 
you in your inmost hearts — in the beautiful language of 
the Church of England Collect, read, learnt, marked, in- 
wardly digested — that to you will be the washing of the 
robes and the making them white in the blood of the 
Lamb. 

It is said " they stand before the throne of God and of 
the Lamb." Here we sit at his feet learning the lessons 
that he teaches ; there we stand before him : here hum- 
ble, lowly, on the earth ; there raised to the dignity of 
sons, heirs, sitting with the Lamb upon his throne, as he 
has sat down with the Father upon his throne. Mark, in 
the next place, the dignity of their position — they stand 
before the throne ; not before a cross, but before the throne. 
The idea is introduction into the royal presence of Him 
who is King of kings and Lord of lords. Then it is 
said, in the next place, "they shall hunger no more:" 
that is to say, if there be the sensation of physical hun- 
ger, it will be no sooner felt than it will be satisfied. But 
if it allude to spiritual hunger, they shall no more hunger 



THE GLORIOUS COMPANY. 



191 



for living bread ; the living bread that cometh down from 
heaven will be their nutriment for ever and ever. And 
then how magnificent is that picture : " He that sitteth 
upon the throne shall dwell among them ! " The Hebrew 
word shechinah, the shechinah, or the bright glory that 
dwelt between the cherubim on the mercy seat in the an- 
cient temple, is derived from the Hebrew verb shakan, 
which means "to dwell among us;" and these words 
translated literally from the Hebrew, as they are not, 
but from the Greek, would be, " And he that sitteth upon 
the throne shall be the shechinah, the visible glory in the 
midst of them." " And the Lamb which is in the midst 
of the throne," it is said, \S shall feed them, and shall lead 
them unto living fountains of waters." But it is very 
noticeable here that they serve God : " they are before the 
throne of God, and serve him." There is no indolence 
there, they serve — active religion. Perhaps now the re- 
deemed souls that are in heaven at this moment serve him. 
We know that angels are constantly ministering to him ; 
they are ministering spirits to them that are the heirs of 
salvation. And I have not the least doubt that your 
brothers and your sisters, and your fathers and your moth- 
ers, and your husbands and your wives, and your children, 
that are now in heaven, are engaged in sublime and cease- 
less service, carrying out the grand behests of Him who 
is King of kings and Lord of lords. And it may be, I 
do not assert it, because Scripture is silent here — it 
may be that the thought suggested to your mind, that 
turning of your feet that altered the whole current of 
your life, may have been a ministry from some angel or 
one of those glorified ones sent to minister to them that 
are the heirs of salvation. " They serve him day and 



192 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



night, without ceasing." And then it is said : 4: The Lamb 
which is in the midst of the throne." What a thought ! 
heaven will never be without the shadow of Calvary. It 
is very striking that throughout the whole Apocalypse, 
which is a picture of the future state, we read constantly 
of the reminiscences of a cross. " I saw a Lamb just as 
if he had been slain ; " and again : " The Lamb which is 
in the midst of the throne." There is a most remarka- 
ble contrast running through the whole Apocalypse be- 
tween two churches, and between two great and living 
ones. The one church is called the ^ noovrj^ the woman 
seated on seven hills ; and the other is the spouse, the 
bride, ^ vvpw, the bride of the Lamb. Then there are 
two glorious living ones ; the Lamb — and it is remarka- 
ble that the Greek word translated :i Lamb " is not the 
masculine, which occurs in John's Gospel, but the neuter, 
aqviov^ 11 the Lamb ; " and then the correlative of 
that is dtigiov, the wild beast on the seven hills, drunk 
with the blood of the saints. And if you will only read 
the Apocalypse carefully, carrying with you these two con- 
trasts, the false church and the true church — the wild 
beast drunk with the blood of the saints, and the Lamb 
— you will have the grand outline by which you may es- 
timate and measure the length and breadth of that mag- 
nificent vision. This Lamb that bears the reminiscence of 
a cross ; this Lamb who points back to Calvary by his ap- 
pearance ; this Lamb who has all the traces of his agony 
and bloody sweat, is in the midst of the throne, a throned 
Lamb, a King and a Priest, a Sacrifice and a ^Saviour. 
" And he shall feed them " with living bread, " and 
shall lead them unto living fountains." In this world we 
have cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water, but 



THE GLORIOUS COMPANY. 



193 



there we find living fountains. " And God shall wipe 
away all tears from their eyes." The Hebrew word for a 
fountain is the same Hebrew word which means also the 
eye, and the word is suggestive ; he shall lead them unto 
living fountains of waters ; and God shall wipe away all 
tears from those fountains that overflow oftener than we 
wish by eyes accustomed to weep. And this peculiarity 
of the Hebrew explains that beautiful passage in Jeremiah, 
where he says : "Oh that mine eyes were tears, and my 
head were a fountain of water." Oh that my fountains, 
that is the eyes, really wept, and that my head were one 
whole eye, that it might weep day and night for the sins 
of my people. 

We shall see him one day no more through a glass dark- 
ly, but face to face ; and the splendor and the riches of 
that high festival will make us marvel that we were so 
pleased and satisfied with this world's poor fare. Let me 
ask, have you washed your robes in that precious blood ? 
Have you cast your sins upon the Lamb that taketh tbem 
away ? Do you belong to the bride, that church that is 
making herself ready, on which the baptism of the Spirit, 
both here and elsewhere, seems to be descending ? Are 
you in that happy number ? do you belong to that bright 
and blessed company ? Then happy are ye ; rejoice and 
be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven. 



9 



194 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



LECTURE XII. 

THE HAPPY DEAD. 

Even now those we call dead are happy. As the day ap- 
proaches their resurrection comes nearer, and the epochal 
hour of their perfect joy begins to sound. 

" And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are 
the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth : Yea, saith the 
Spirit, that they may rest from their labors ; and their works do fol- 
low them." — Revelation xiv. 13. 

It would be a poor religion that would carry its consola- 
tions to the fireside, but arrest them at the grave's mouth. 
It would not be equal to all the necessities of our condi- 
tion, if it did not shed its calm of peace, its splendor of 
hope, where the near and the dear repose beneath the sha- 
dow of the cypress, as well as scatter its bright and happy 
lights under Christmas roof-trees and by Christmas fire- 
sides. It is a religion for the breaking heart as well as 
for the bounding heart ; for life's sorrows as well as for 
life's joys ; and one does not know whether it ministers 
most of sweetness to our joys or of consolation in our sor- 
rows ; it equally meets the necessities of both — it is a 
religion- in which to live and to die, and to hope, as we lie 



THE HAPPY DEAD. 



195 



down under the shadow of death, that we shall rise again. 
The language of the seer is the language of joy. Un- 
happily we have not yet grown accustomed to look at death, 
as we should, in the light of Christianity, of the Cross, 
of Gethsemane, Mount Zion, and the resurrection morn. 
We associate with death all that is gloomy, and dark, arid 
sepulchral. Hence, the monuments you find in cemeteries 
are often Egyptian sarcophagi, broken columns, images of 
weepers like Rachel that will not he comforted, inverted 
torches. What are all these? Heathen symbols, the 
symbols of despair, the monuments that atheism might 
erect, but that Christianity must spurn and deplore. 
Everything associated with the sleeping-place of the saint- 
ed dead should be bright, and joyous, and happy. If one 
could take away from Pere la Chaise its frivolity, one 
would like to retain its brightness. At all events, when 
we look upon the dead that die in the Lord we can say, 
not, How wretched, how sad, how miserable ! but, Happy 
are the dead. Now no religion can teach you and me to 
say so except that which had its birth on a Christmas-day 
1862 years ago. No religion can enable us to pronounce, 
" Blessed are the dead " but the religion of the Lord Je- 
sus Christ. Happy even is the prince that leaves a mag- 
nificent ancestral palace: for if numbered with God's 
saints in glory everlasting, the transference from earth's 
brightest scene to heaven's dimmest spot is a transference 
so glorious that the redeemed that are there must often 
marvel at the weepers they witness upon earth. If they 
could speak out from their silence and transmit their 
voices across the chasm that separates them from us. they 
would ask. Have you forgotten the words that are taught 
you in the Apocalypse : " Blessed." not miserable, " are 



196 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth ; Yea, 
sai th the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors ; 
and their works do follow them ? " 

We have first of all described here those who are called 
" the dead." It is, and I admit it so far, a sorrowful 
reflection that the dead beneath England's soil outnumber 
the living that are on it. In fact, we walk upon the dust 
and over the tombs of the dead. Buried generations are 
beneath every footprint as we traverse the streets of the 
great city of this great empire. If these dead were un- 
enlightened, or if these dead were all in suffering, it would 
be a sad thought ; but there is here a benediction pro- 
nounced upon the sleeping dead that consecrates the ashes 
of those that are gone, and converts the very chamber of 
weeping into an ante-room, a court, a mansion of our Fa- 
ther which is in heaven. The dead are everywhere. Death 
was not meant to be ; it is an interpolation ; it was not in 
ancient Paradise that was, and it will not be in Paradise 
that is to come. Christianity does not now extinguish the 
fact of dying, but it transfigures, transforms, and glorifies 
it in a Christian. The peculiarity of the Gospel is that it 
does not put an end to sickness, it does not avert old age, 
or annihilate death in this dispensation ; but it gives those 
compensatory forces, it imparts those hopes, it strikes in 
the heart those springs and wells of life that inspire us to 
say as the apostle said of his bitterest experience : " Our 
light afflictions, which are but for a moment, are not 
worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be reveal- 
ed ; and though no tribulation for the present seemeth 
joyous, yet afterward it worketh out the peaceable fruits 
of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby." 
But we think of the dead as merely the dust that sleeps 



THE HAPPY DEAD. 



19T 



in the caves of the ocean, or under the green sod or mon- 
ument, or in the silent cemetery ; whereas the dead, in the 
noblest, the truest, and deepest sense of the word, are 
those that truly live. The fact is, we are here prisoners 
in a prison, patients in an hospital, exiles in the land of 
banishment ; the dead that are blessed have gone home, 
and live as sons in the sunshine of their Father's house, 
servants who serve him day and night without fatigue and' 
without ceasing. They live; we exist. "Blessed are 
the dead," then, " that die in the Lord." 

But there is here a remarkable distinction, a distinc- 
tion that involves all. All the dead, it seems, are not 
blessed. If we could we would have it that they should 
all be happy. But we are here not to deal with the ex- 
clusiveness implied in the text, but with its inclusiveness. 
Those that we know are now happy, those that we know 
now live, life in its intensest degree, are they that die in 
the Lord. Where else they die is of no consequence what- 
ever. It is just as near to heaven from the deep coal-mine 
in which the miners perished as it is from the Royal Pal- 
ace of Windsor in which a prince fell asleep, trusting in 
what he repeated, " Rock of Ages cleft for me; " as near 
to heaven from the wayside, the field, the hut, the hovel, 
as from noble hall or from sanctuary or cathedral ; for the 
simple reason that the way to heaven is not by a palace nor 
by a church, but by that living Way which covers all 
space, and does not cease in its upward stretch until it 
touches the very throne of God himself. It is they that 
die in the Lord that are hnppy, wherever they die. 

But what is meant by the expression, " die in. the 
Lord?" "There is no condemnation to them that are 
in Christ." Then, says the apostle — " That I may be 



198 



THE HAPPY DEAD. 



found in Christ; " and he says in another passage, " I 
knew a man in Christ." The idea to be conveyed is just 
this : — as the fugitive found shelter that was legal in the 
city of refuge, and out of which he could not be dragged ; 
as Noah found safety in the ark, and there was no safety 
in the largest ship, or on the highest mountain, or in the 
strongest tower besides ; as the guests found acceptance in 
the wedding garment; so the believer is safe, sheltered, 
and clothed, and immortal in the happiness he has and in 
the happiness he hopes for in the Lord Jesus Christ. 
" Perfect," says Ezekiel, "through the comeliness that I 
have put upon you." " As by one man's disobedience the 
many," the mass, were made sinners, " so by one man's 
obedience shall the mass, the many, be made righteous ; " 
' ' He that knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might 
be made the righteousness of God in him." Just as our 
iniquities laid on Christ were never his, so his righteousness 
laid on us will never be ours. He was infinitely innocent 
when he sank beneath the load of our transgressions into 
the grave ; we shall be miserable sinners when we cross 
the margin of heaven, and by his righteousness are ad- 
mitted into everlasting joy. The safety of the sinner is 
in Christ ; and the refuge is so large, and all so welcome, 
that if you are not now among the living in Christ, and if 
you shall not be found then among the dead in Christ, it will 
not be God's blame, it will not be deficiency in the atone- 
ment, it will not be exclusiveness in the Gospel ; it is be- 
cause you say what one said of old : My own dress is 
good enough, and I do not mean to have the wedding gar- 
ment ; my own virtues are abundant enough, and I do not 
wish to be indebted to any one else ; my own condition is 
all that I want, and I do not want any one to become my 



THE HAPPY DEAD. 



199 



sponsor or to take my responsibility upon him. Salvation 
is consenting to be saved ; damnation is refusing to let God 
keep you out of hell and take you to heaven. I say, con- 
demnation is refusing to let God save you in God's own 
way, and the man that so persists must be a fool, a mad- 
man, and if neither, he is a suicide, he destroys himself, 
he is destroyed by none. Here then is the great central 
truth of Christianity, that we live in Christ, that we be 
found in Christ, that we die in Christ, that we may be 
through eternity with Christ. It matters little in what 
rank you are when you die if you die in Christ ; it mat- 
ters nothing to what church or chapel you belong if you 
are found in Christ, it matters little where you live, in 
what country, or on what level, or in what circumstances, 
if you are found in Christ. Each of these things has a 
value, but I am speaking of the great central and essen- 
tial element, that settles in the sight of God what we are 
upon earth, and that determines beyond the grave what 
we shall be for ever. Are we then among the living in 
Christ ? is our trust there ? If we must say, our trust 
wavers, and our love grows cold, and our memory becomes 
oblivious, and our feelings become blunted, and the world 
gains much upon us, more than we could wish, yet can we 
say, There is a spark of love lingering in my heart light- 
ed from the altars of heaven, which I would not have 
quenched or exchanged even for earth's best and bright- 
est things ? Can you say, If I do not trust as I should, 
nor love as I ought, nor serve as becomes me, it is my 
sorrow and my regret that it is not so ; and it is my de- 
sire and my heart's prayer to God that I may know him 
more, that I may serve him better, and it is my hope that 
having lived in Christ I may die in Christ ; and then, dis- 



200 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



entangled and emancipated from all the restraints, and the 
contagion, and the infection of evil in this world, I shall 
see thee as thou art, and I shall serve thee as I ought, and 
that for ever ? 

What a blessed thought, -that the way to heaven is so 
plain and so simple, and that we can think of those that 
have left us as only to be envied, while they look down 
upon us and pity us ! I know it is very difficult to con- 
vince the dying that it is so, because we all have that 
lingering, instinctive horror of death which we imbibed 
under the shadow of the departing glory and setting splen- 
dor of Paradise, and which never becomes extinguished 
altogether even in the hearts of the best. But we know 
the force of thought ; we know that thought can master 
feeling as far as it is in the body ; that feeling in the 
heart can overcome present griefs and sorrows, and through 
grace make one more than conqueror. And if we take 
these great truths and lay them to our hearts and dwell 
upon them, life will have a little of heaven's sunshine to 
light up its darkness, and we shall be happy living in 
Christ, and we shall go down into the valley of the shad- 
ow of death happy in dying in Christ, assured that absent 
from the body we are instantly present with him. 

I have spoken entirely in this matter of the soul ; but 
I need not say that it is no less true of the body ; that the 
eye of the Resurrection and the Life rests upon every 
atom of the sleeping body of the humblest believer. On 
the grave sits literally the angel of the resurrection, wait- 
ing to hear the command from the sky, Let the trumpet 
sound and the dead arise. The cold clay laid in the nar- 
row house appointed for all living is not lost nor cast away, 
it is not to be consumed in the last fire ; but to be quick- 



THE HAPPY DEAD. 



201 



ened, to be reconsecrated, to be rebuilt into a house, a 
shrine, a body that will have no defect, no decay, no mor- 
tality, and that will know no death for ever and ever. 

There is an expression in this passage which is well 
worth noticing, and which is often omitted when one at- 
tempts to explain it, namely : u From henceforth ; Yea, 
saith the Spirit." We usually read it ; " Blessed are the 
dead which die in the Lord ; they rest from their labors ; " 
but it is here : " Write, Blessed are the dead which die in 
the Lord from henceforth." . What is meant by this 
phrase ? If you read the chapter as a whole you will find 
that this text is an announcement from heaven toward the 
close of the present Christian economy. Immediately after 
this you read : " And I looked, and behold a white cloud, 
and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having 
on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle. 
And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud 
voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle, 
and reap ; for the time is come for thee to reap ; for the 
harvest of the earth is ripe." Then take in connection 
with this what our Saviour says in the Gospel: "The 
harvest is the end of the world, the angels," he says, are 
" the reapers;" the wheat is to be gathered into ever- 
lasting garners, the tares to be burned up with unquench- 
able fire. It is at the close of this economy, whenever it 
may be, and on the eve of the great judgment, and the 
reaping of the harvest of the earth, that a voice comes 
down : " Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord 
from henceforth." It is a special and distinctive blessed- 
ness arising from this, that in the case of all that die at 
the close or approaching the close of the present Christian 
dispensation, their bodies will not have to rest long in the 
9* 



202 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



grave till they are raised. For instance, the silent dust 
of Adam and Eve has been slumbering in some far distant 
grave for 6000 years. Again, the bodies of Abraham 
and Sarah, reduced to insensible dust, lie beneath the oaks 
of Mamre, where they were buried. The bodies of Paul 
and Peter, the faithful and eloquent apostles, rest in their 
unknown graves, and have been there for upwards of 1800 
years. But those that die now are 1800 years nearer the 
resurrection ; those that die on the eve of that great har- 
vest of the earth will only have to sleep a little while ; 
they will be the Lazaruses of the earth : the brother of 
Martha and her sister Mary was only a few days in the 
sepulchre, and then he rose and came forth. So some 
will die whose bodies will only be a few days in the grave ; 
and others will never die, because they that are alive at 
that day will not die, but will be changed, transformed, 
and glorified whilst they live. Such is the explanation of 
the remarkable expression : 11 From henceforth ; " that 
is, from the point of time indicated in this chapter, which 
is a short time before the harvest of the earth and the re- 
surrection of the dead. 

Then the beautiful benediction opens up into such words 
as these : " Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from 
their labors ; and their works do follow them." The % 
word M Write" looks as if there was a response here to 
the ancient patriarch's prayer. It is a most interesting 
thing to go over the New Testament, and notice how often 
the wants that were expressed in the Old Testament are 
filled up by special intimations in the New ; how often the 
yearnings of the human heart in an imperfect economy are 
met and overflowed by the fulness of the more perfect dis- 
pensation. Jqb said in his distress : "Oh that my words 



THE HAPPY DEAD, 



203 



were now written ! Oh that they were printed in a book ; 
that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the 
rock for ever!" Now what words? Here they are: 
" For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall 
stand at the latter day upon the earth ; and though after 
my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I 
see God." Job's prayer is : Oh that this were written ! 
oh that it were engraven in the rock, that the eyes of all 
mankind might read it and be electrified with the hope ! 
The voice comes from heaven, Gratify the sleeping patri- 
arch on his eastern plains ; write it in a book, print it in a 
book, engrave it imperishable upon the paper of that book : 
" Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from 
henceforth ; Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from 
their labors ; and their works do follow them." 

Notice in the next place who says it : "Yea, saith the 
Spirit." That is very beautiful ; the Holy Ghost is the 
Comforter of his people, and it is the Holy Spirit that 
takes these words, and repeats them, and applies them to 
the human heart. " Yea, saith the Spirit." The Saviour 
says : " He shall take of the things of mine and shew 
them unto you." Now one of the things of Christ is, 
" Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest ; " " I will give you rest." "Yea, 
saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors ; " 
that is to say, the rest that Christ invited you to is that 
rest that I now teach you and that I now preach to you ; 
and that rest is enjoyed by all believers who have fallen 
asleep in the Lord Jesus Christ. In this world we have 
labor, not rest ; but there it is said they rest from their 
labors. And yet that rest from their labors is not indo- 
lence or quiescence, for we are told in another passage in 



204 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



the Apocalypse, in the 7th chapter, that they rest not. but 
that " they serve him day and night in his temple." 
Then what is the explanation of it ? They will have all 
the refreshment of labor without its fatigue, all the excite- 
ment of action without its exhaustion ; ceaseless service, 
but they will never be weary. 

It is lastly added. " And their works do follow them." 
"What a beautiful thought ! In other words, the Chris- 
tians that die in Christ are not without marks that they 
belong to Christ. What is the mark of a branch of a 
good vine ? That it blossoms and ripens into grapes. 
What is the mark of a branch of a good apple-tree? 
That it is bowed nearest to the earth like humility, because 
laden with most fruit. What is the mark of living in 
Christ and dying in Christ ? That wo have done some- 
thing, or dared something, or tried to do something to make 
some heavy heart light, some sad one joyful, some desert 
place to blossom, and that we have not been in the world 
either blots or blank?;, but in our sphere and according to 
our means limited as each necessarily is in this respect, we 
have done something to light some one to heaven ; or if we 
have not done that, to lighten the load and the pressure of 
tribulation here below, and to give as much of a foretaste of 
heaven upon earth as it is possible for us in our imperfection 
to communicate. 

It is said, Their works do follow them." If it had 
been said, their works precede them, that would have been 
merit ; but it is here said, u Their works do follow them." 
The believer is accepted not because of his works, but in 
spite of his sins.; the Christian is admitted into heaven 
not because of the works he has done, but in spite of the 
sins he has done. But then the works follow after to at- 



THE HAPPY DEAD. 



205 



test and to proclaim as they follow, We are accepted be- 
cause he that did these works was accepted, and lived and 
died in Christ ;*and we come up now to record this in the 
registers of heaven and before the great white throne as 
witnesses, bearing our attestations to the fruitfulness of 
that character, to the services of that servant : "I was an 
hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye 
gave me drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took me in ; 
naked, and ye clothed me ; I was sick, and ye visited me ; 
I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Inasmuch as ye 
have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, 
ye have done it unto me; " and your works are accepted 
not as merits, but as the shining footprints on your path 
through the world — the credentials of a character that 
was the creation of grace — the irresistible exponents of a 
piety that never could be monastic or ascetic, that loved to 
pour itself forth in whatsoever things were pure, and 
just, and lovely, and honest, and beneficent, and of good 
report. 



206 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



LECTURE XIII. 

THE HARVEST OF THE EARTH. 

Of whom does the prophet here speak ? Of himself or 
some other ? He asks : 

" Who is this that conieth from Edovn, with dyed garments from Bozrah ? 
this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his 
strength? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save," &c. — 
Isaiah Ixiii. 1-4. 

In all probability, the conclusion of a Latin Father, Je- 
rome, who lived in the fourth century, is the right one ; 
he says : " Many of us refer this passage to the consum- 
mation or the end of the world ; we think this to be ac- 
complished at the second advent, in which his voice is 
heard as judging, slaying his own enemies, and all the 
enemies of his people." That the words refer to the Mes- 
siah seems beyond dispute. It is impossible, as Barnes 
inclines to believe, to refer them to Judas Maccabaeus. 
Who but the Prince of Life can say : " I that speak in 
righteousness ? " But when we come to look at it in the 
light of parallel Scriptural passages, we shall see that it 
can refer to none else but the Messiah ; it is the prophetic 
portrait, as Jerome has expressed it, of that tremendous 



THE HARVEST OF THE EARTH. 



207 



scene which will issue in destruction to all that refuse to 
kiss the Son and to embrace his Gospel, but in the ever- 
lasting salvation of all that believe at that day. That 
this passage cannot refer to the atonement made eighteen 
hundred years ago is abundantly obvious. Christians do 
quote the words; treading the wine-press alone, as appli- 
cable to the sacrifice made on Calvary. But the figura- 
tive significance of the wine-press is always judgment, 
never mercy. The harvest of the earth, or the gathering 
of the wheat, is in loving-kindness ; but the treading of 
the wine-press, the vintage of the earth, is the Scrip- 
ture phrase for judgment. His garments on this occasion 
are not sprinkled with his own blood, as would have been 
the case if the words had referred to the atonement, but 
with the blood of his enemies ; and the language used im- 
plies it is the day of vengeance that is come. Calvary 
was not the scene of vengeance ; nor was the epoch of it 
the hour of retribution ; and therefore it cannot apply to 
it. It has been suggested by others that it may refer to 
the destruction of Jerusalem seventy years after the birth 
of Christ, but this is not probable ; for in the first place, 
there is no historic allusion here to the future destruction 
of Jerusalem. When he came to destroy Jerusalem, if 
he can be said to have come to do so, he did not come 
from Edom, nor did he come from Bozrah. Besides, this 
prophecy indicates that great good is to result to Israel ; 
whereas the destruction of Jerusalem was a great calamity 
to the whole nation of the Jews. Then to what event or 
scene does it refer ? If we turn to the parallel passages 
of which I have already spoken, we shall find the true 
solution. In Revelation xiv. 15, are these words : " And 
another angel came out of the temple, crying with a 



208 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION 



loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy 
sickle, and reap ; for the time is come for thee to reap ; 
for the harvest of the earth is rips. And he that sat on 
the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth ; and the earth 
was reaped. And another angel came out of the temple 
which is in heaven, he .also having a sharp sickle. And 
another angel came out from the altar, which had power 
over fire ; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the 
sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gath- 
er the clusters of the vine of the earth ; for her grapes 
are fully ripe. And the angel thrust in his sickle into the 
earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into 
the great wine-press of the wrath of God." This is an 
event described, I admit, in highly-figurative language ; 
but where there are figures there must be facts underly- 
ing them. A figure is not an empty conceit ; it is a fact, 
or a truth, or a doctrine clothed in material drapery and 
made intelligible to us, either by the splendor or the fa- 
miliarity of the allusions in which it is clad. "We have the 
very same thought in Revelation xix. 11, where we read : 
" And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse ; 
and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, 
and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His 
eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many 
crowns ; and he had a name written, that no man knew, 
but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped 
in blood ; and his name is called The Word of God. And 
the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white 
horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out 
of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should 
smite the nations ; and he shall rule them with a rod of 
iron ; and he treadeth the . wine-press of the fierceness and 



THE HARVEST OE THE EARTH. 



209 



wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and 
on his thigh a name written, King of kings, and Lord of 
lords. And I saw an angel standing in the sun ; and he 
cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in 
the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together 
unto the supper of the great God ; " and so on to the end 
of that chapter. Both these describe in most graphic 
terms the scene that will take place at the close of this 
present economy; it is indeed very awful, unspeakably 
tragic ; but one ought not to blame the preacher because 
he speaks forth these things, if he speaks honestly, and 
faithfully, and fully what God has written. Every picture 
of the Saviour's return to our world — and everybody 
believes he will come again who even believes the Apos- 
tles' Creed — is a bright light set in the bosom of the 
blackest and the darkest shadow. He comes to tread 
the wine- press ; he comes to the nations to a great slaugh- 
ter; he comes to a fearful sacrifice in Bozrah, and he comes 
also, we rejoice to know, and to believe, and to hope, with 
salvation to all them that believe in his name. The two 
features that accompany his advent, namely judgment and 
mercy are represented by the apostle when he says : u To 
you who are troubled rest with us ; " " there remaineth a 
rest for the people of God." When shall that rest be ? 
" When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven 
with his mighty angels;" doing what? First of all Jir 
" in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not 
God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus 
Christ ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruc- 
tion from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of 
his power ; " that is the one feature. Then the other is : 
cl When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to 



210 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



be admired in all them that believe, in that day." Here 
the* we have the two accompaniments of the Saviour's re- 
turn to our world ; one vengeance, or translated into soft- 
er, but equally just language, retribution upon all that 
have rejected the Gospel ; and the other glorification, hon- 
or, majesty, and dignity, bestowed upon all them that be- 
lieve. In other words, there is the twofold aspect : 
" Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom; 
depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the 
devil and his angels.'' 

The next question we require to answer is, what and 
where is this Edom, this Bozrah ? There is no place of 
any importance corresponding to Idumea, or to Edom. and 
Bozrah now. We know the sites of these places ; but 
their existence is airy as a myth at the present day. 
Evidently, like Tarshish, which is used to represent a 
modern Gentile power ; like Babylon, used in the Apo- 
calypse to denote the apostacy ; this Edom and Bozrah are 
prophetic names for the enemies of God and of his Christ. 
That these names, or rather those whom these names rep- 
resent, belong to an era long subsequent to the day in 
which Isaiah wrote, namely, to an era still future to us, 
however far or near that futurity may be, is plain from 
the 34th of Isaiah, where you will find a picture of this 
same judgment, in the 4th verse : " And all the host of 
heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled 
together as a scroll ; and all their host shall fall down, as 
the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from 
the fig-tree. Eor my sword shall be bathed in heaven ; 
behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the 
people of my curse, to judgment. The sword of the Lord 
is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with 



THE HARVEST OF THE EARTH. 



2U 



the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys 
of rams ; for the Lord hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a 
great slaughter in the land of Idumea." The prediction 
in the 4th verse that the host of heaven shall be dissolved, 
and the heavens rolled together like a scroll, is the picture 
of what will transpire when Christ returns ; and therefore 
as Idumea and Bozrah are spoken of as existing at that 
era, these two names must be the representative symbols of 
a people at that time future. And that this Idumea and 
Bozrah in the 34th of Isaiah, on whom judgments fall, 
were a yet future people, is plain from Isaiah xxxv., the 
picture of what immediately follows ; for it says there : 
" The wilderness and the solitary place shall be* glad for 
them ; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. 
It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and 
singing ; the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the 
excellency of Carmel and Sharon." " No lion shall be 
there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall 
not be found there ; but the redeemed shall walk there." 
In other words, the 34th of Isaiah is a picture of the re- 
tribution, or of the Saviour when his garments are stained 
with blood, when he treads the wine-press ; and the 35th 
chapter is a picture of the future, or millennial rest, or 
eternal sunrise ; in the light and splendor of which all the 
redeemed of the Lord shall be glorified. Edom, and Idu- 
mea, therefore, and Babylon, I look upon as names repre- 
sentative of the apostate churches specially in Christen- 
dom, and of all who are baptized with their baptism or 
adherents of their system. I might refer you to Zepha- 
niah i. 7 ; to Malachi iv. 5 ; and to Joel iii. 9, where you 
will find the same picture repeated : in fact, this picture 
is so often reproduced that it seems to be the design of 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



God deeply to impress it upon the readers of the Bible. 
Take as one of these the words Joel iii. 9 : " Proclaim ye 
this among the Gentiles : Prepare war ; wake up the 
mighty men, let all the men of war draw near ; let them 
come up ; beat your ploughshares into swords, and your 
pruning-hooks into spears ; let the weak say, I am strong. 
Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather 
yourselves together round about; thither cause thy mighty 
ones to come down, Lord. Let the heathen be wakened, 
and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat ; for there will 
I sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put ye in the 
sickle, for the harvest is ripe ; come, get you down ; for 
the press is full ; the fats overflow ; for their wickedness 
is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of deci- 
sion ; for the day of the Lord i3 near in the valle} 7- of de- 
cision. The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the 
stars shall withdraw their shining. The Lord also shall 
roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem ; and 
the heavens and the earth shall shake ; but the Lord will 
be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children 
of Israel.' 7 This is substantially the same picture. I 
might quote other passages which more or less refer to it ; 
all indicating that this slaughter of Edom, this destruction 
of Bozrah, accompanied with such fearful evidences of 
wrath, will take place at the close of this present economy. 
That this Edom and Bozrah specially represent the apos- 
tate and corrupt church of Rome I have scarcely a doubt, 
from the parallelism of Revelation xix. The last half of 
that chapter is the picture of this judgment, in language 
heart-rending and awful : " And after these things I heard 
a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia ; 
Salvation, and glory, and honor, and power, unto the 



THE HARVEST OF THE EARTH. 213 



Lord our God ; for true and righteous are bis judgments ; 
for he hath judged her which did corrupt the earth with 
her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants 
at her hand. And again they said, Alleluia. And her 
smoke rose up for ever and ever." The whole of the 18th 
chapter of the Book of Revelation is a vivid and graphic 
account of the fearful calamities- that shall overtake Bab- 
ylon : we read, for instance : " All nations have drunk 
of the wine of the wrath of her fornication .... Babylon 

the great is fallen Her plagues shall come in one 

day .... The voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, 
and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee . . . 
And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in 
thee : and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride 
shall be heard no more at all in thee ; for thy merchants 
were the great men of the earth ; for by thy sorceries were 
all nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of 
prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon 
the earth." Such is the picture of the destruction of 
Edom, or Bozrah, or Babylon ; for all are symbols of the 
same thing. The 19th chapter is the shout that rings from 
heaven to earth, and returns from earth to heaven in mul- 
tiplied reverberations, because this great and wicked apos- 
tacy is at length overthrown. £ ' The four and twenty 
elders and the four beasts fell down and worshipped God 
that sat on the throne, saying, Amen ; Alleluia." Then 
a voice, a solitary voice comes forth from the throne, say- 
ing : "Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that 
fear him, both small and great." And then the magnifi- 
cent peal occurs : " And I heard," in response to this in- 
vitation, M as it were the voice of a great multitude." 
The tramp of horses rushing to battle ; the noise of artil- 



2U 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



lery in action, are not comparable to the gigantic sliout of 
a people emancipated from slavery, and rejoicing in the 
freedom with which they have been made free. u I heard 
as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice 
of many waters." What a grand picture is that ! I have 
often seen the waves of the sea when stricken by the great 
hurricane roll in, awakening the most magnificent bass it 
is possible to conceive, and then breaking into spray in the 
shrillest soprano; and the two sounds mingle together, 
and form a harmony the only just expression of which is 
" the voice of many waters." " And as the voice of 
mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia ; for the Lord God 
omnipotent reigneth." Here then is the picture of this 
corrupt church judged, and here are the feelings of God's 
people in heaven on the occasion. I have heard the ques- 
tion asked, How can any possibly hear of these things and 
rejoice ? We grieve that any should be the victims of so 
awful a superstition ; we grieve that any should live re- 
jecting that blessed Gospel ; but whatever our feelings may 
be, we must appeal to the record of God for the emotions 
that become the occasion ; and when that great Babylon 
shall sink like a millstone into the ocean, and when the 
smoke of her fire shall rise for ever and ever, he does not 
say that there is one weeping voice heard, or one regretful 
feeling experienced among the saved. The sacred seer, 
w T ho pictures what God inspires, distinctly tells us that all 
heaven and earth will join together in one jubilant shout, 
" Alleluia ; " because this fearfully vile and corrupt sys- 
tem is gone, in which is the blood of saints and of pro- 
phets, and of all that have been slain upon the earth. 

When that scene shall take place, certain things will oc- 
cur that we surely may rejoice in. When this judgment 



THE HARVEST OE THE EARTH. 



215 



shall fall upon Edom and upon Bozrah, when this vine 
shall be reaped and this wine-press shall be trodden, we 
may rejoice that superstition in all its shades shall be dis- 
sipated ; that dark pall that has hung between a bright 
sky and a darkened and benighted earth, intercepting from 
millions the beams of the Sun of Righteousness, shall be 
dissolved in the splendor of the Sun of Righteousness; and 
between your heart and that Sun risen in the sky never 
more to set, there shall be no obstructing or intercepting 
element at all ; we shall see him as he is, no more through 
a glass darkly, but face to face. There is another fact 
that will occur then, over which we may rejoice, namely, 
all persecution shall cease. What is the history of the 
Roman Catholic Church? Persecution of the people of 
God. I wish her apologists would only read her history, 
not written by Protestants, but as I have read it, written 
by her own selected and most competent divines. Nobody 
ignorant of the facts of the case would believe that in the 
name of the merciful Jesus so much blood has been shed ; 
that in the name of our holy and blessed religion such 
tragedies have been enacted. But if God were to bid the 
earth speak and utter its voice, every one of the Cottian 
Alps would find a tongue ; the dungeons of Naples, the 
catacombs of Rome, Smithfield in the centre of our own 
city, the glens and the grey moors of Scotland, each would 
find a tongue ; and when they should hear that that great 
persecutor of the earth is fallen, they too would shout, 
u Alleluia, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." Let 
us be glad that the day comes when all persecution shall 
cease. Truth relies on its intrinsic temper for its lasting 
and its certain triumphs ; it spurns a carnal weapon. 
Wherever we see carnal weapons employed for religion, all 



216 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



is wrong. They may be the sword, or the rack, or the 
dungeon ; they may be nicknames, or satire, or abuse ; 
wherever these are called into play we may be sure there 
is a latent consciousness that truth is not upon the side of 
them that use them. But wherever truth is spoken in its 
simplicity, no carnal weapon will be needed ; it leans upon 
itself and upon him who is its author for its strength, and 
encouragement, and support. Persecution is not only an 
iniquity, it is a huge inexpediency. It is not only a most 
wicked thing to punish a man's body in order to root out 
convictions from his mind ; but it is a most inexpedient 
thing, for the reason that it never succeeds. Persecution 
never rooted out a truth, nor did it ever build up perma- 
nently a lie. It has often made the attempt to do both, 
but in every instance it has failed ; and by a strange law, 
they that use the sword shall fall by the sword. You can 
never do injury to another, without feeling that injury re- 
bound and strike yourself. Wind a chain round the wrist 
of the blackest negro in America, and you will find the 
other end gradually tightening round your own. You are 
fated ever more to drink the bitterness of the cup you 
have mingled for a brother. Never do an unjust thing to 
promote justice ; or speak an untruthful thing to promote 
truth ; or use a carnal weapon in any sense to accomplish 
what you believe to be God's will. Rest assured there is 
a radiance, and a majesty, and a power, about naked truth, 
that are its most resplendent forces, and the prophecies of 
its spread and its universal triumph. At that day, when 
Edom, and Bozrah, and Babylon shall all fall, tradition 
shall then cease to be the rule of faith in any sense or in 
any degree. One of the worst things upon earth is what 
Rome thinks one of the best — tradition. It is the man- 



* 



THE HARVEST OF THE EARTH. 217 

ufactory out of which endless evils and lies have been 
spun ; it is the anvil on which fatal errors have been beat- 
en out into shape ; it is the mint from which a false . cur- 
rency comes. It is always so available. When a man 
wants to establish what is not true, and when he cannot 
get a text from the Bible, he has only to apply to some 
old monk, who heard a former monk tell the story, who 
heard another monk before him tell it ; and thus tracing 
it back by imaginary links to the apostles, he finds tradi- 
tion a most admirable champion for defending every novel- 
ty which man's imagination can introduce. At that day, 
too. a false priesthood will be utterly swept away. And 
it is the most fearful corruption of the truth, and one of 
the Avorst brands upon the brow of modern Edom, that the 
minister of Christ is not represented as an ambassador pro- 
claiming good news, but as a priest to make an atonement 
for the people's sins. The distinction is vital. Grant that 
the minister of the Gospel is a sacrificing priest, and all 
the superstructure of Romanism logically follows. The 
hinge of the vast difference between Protestant truth and 
Romish error is that one doctrine. In the Protestant 
Church ministers are pastors, to feed the flock ; ambassa- 
dors, to bring good tidings to the people ; teachers, to in- 
struct them ; evangelists, to declare good news ; but we 
deny that the Archbishop of Canterbury is a priest in any 
other sense than that in which the poorest Christian wid- 
ow is. We are all in one sense priests unto God, offering 
spiritual sacrifices ; but no minister is a sacrificing priest. 
We do not require any man to make an atonement for the 
sins of the people. In the Lord's Supper many people 
have the idea that it is the minister there who gives the 
sacrament. That is a questionable notion. The minister 
10 



218 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



there presides officially for the sake of order and accord- 
ing to the institution of God, as the first believer ; he is 
the presiding Christian, that is all. It is a festival for a 
flock, not a sacrifice offered up to make atonement for the 
sins of a people. These rags of Idumea — these, the er • 
rors, the superstition, the idol-worship of Edom and Boz- 
rah, shall be swept away like the mists of morning before 
the everlasting sunrise. And surely the judgment that 
clears the sky of such clouds, that eliminates from the 
earth such corruptions, however severe, must awaken a 
hallelujah, as it does in the Apocalypse, in the hearts of 
all them that hear that she who so long corrupted the na- 
tions, on whose garments is the blood of saints — Babylon, 
the mystery of iniquity, has fallen never more to rise. 
When one at this moment looks to the continent of Europe, 
grieved at the tragic scenes that are being enacted, and 
gazing with dismay at yet more awful scenes that loom into 
view ; yet one can see mercy mingling with judgment ; 
for amid the utter desolation of Rome we read of the Gos- 
pel preached in its cathedrals ; Italian Bibles coming in 
at one gate, and the Pope making ready to escape by the 
opposite ; his Cardinals in dismay ; the priests revolting ; 
and the sagacious and powerful Emperor of the French 
proposing to dispense with the Pope altogether, and to take 
matters into his own management. He cannot manage 
matters worse, he may make them better. The repudia- 
tion of the Pope by France, should it take place, would 
prove like the repudiation of the Pope in England. Hen- 
ry the Eighth wanted simply to get rid of the Pope ; he 
did not want to get rid of Popery, but he was resolved to 
be his own Pope ; but his violence ended in a glorious re- 
formation. The powerful ruler of France may seek to be 



THE HARVEST OF THE EARTH. 



219 



his own Pope ; but if he succeed, it will end in making 
that people what they might be — the finest race in Eu- 
rope : a people with the Bible in their churches, and 
faithful ministers preaching to them the unsearchable 
riches of Christ. 

When Edom and Bozrah shall thus disappear amid 
these judgments, we must not at the same time overlook 
the fact that the visible church also is judged. In those 
expressive parables which the Saviour sets before us in 
Matthew xiii., we read at the 37th verse : "He answered 
and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the 
Son of man ; the field is the world ; the good seed are 
the children of the kingdom ; but the tares are the chil- 
dren of the wicked one ; the enemy that sowed them is 
the devil ; the harvest is the end of the world ; and the 
reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gath- 
ered and burned in the fire ; so shall it be in the end of 
this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, 
and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that 
offend, and them which do iniquity ; and shall cast them 
into a furnace of fire ; there shall be wailing and gnash- 
ing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the 
sun in the kingdom of their Father." Here you have the 
judgment beginning at the house of God, and passing forth 
like a devouring flame to Bozrah, to Idumea, to Babylon, 
to the Mahometan nations, and to the Pagan tribes in the 
utmost parts of the earth. The visible church is not com- 
posed of believers only ; all the baptised are not regener- 
ated ; all that appear at a communion-table will not sit 
down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom 
of our Father. And therefore when he comes with his 
fan in his hand, he will winnow the chaff from the wheat, 



220 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



he will gather the tares and cast them into the furnace, 
and the wheat he will store up in everlasting garners. 
Here therefore is judgment not merely upon that great 
apostacy that has corrupted the earth, but also on the 
whole visible church. Who dare say that all professors 
are Christians? Who would venture to affirm that 
there is any such thing upon earth as a perfect church, or 
a perfect communion, or even a perfect believer ? The 
great question for us to ask ourselves is, Are we tares, or 
are we wheat ? Are we believers, or are we mere formal- 
ists ? We have the same pictures sketched no less vividly 
in Matthew xxv., in a passage specially worthy of at- 
tention ; " Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened 
unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth 
to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and 
five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, 
and took no oil with them ; but the wise took oil in their 
vessels with their lamps. While the bridegroom tarried 
they all slumbered and slept," the wise as well as the 
foolish. "And at midnight there was a cry made*' — 
this is the picture of the second advent — "Behold the 
bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all 
those virgins arose ; " that is, the five wise and the five 
foolish alike having slept, then awoke ; " and trimmed 
their lamps. And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us 
of your oil ; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise 
answered, saying, Not so ; lest there be not enough for us 
and you ; but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for 
yourselves." Here is set forth the very essence of Pope- 
ry. The five foolish virgins had lamps just as bright and 
as beautiful as the lamps carried by the five wise virgins, 
but they omitted what was worth ten thousand lamps of 



THE HARVEST OF THE EARTH. 



221 



gold — the oil of grace. What is the use of a splendid 
church with no Gospel ? What is the use of an apostolical 
succession that has no apostolic doctrine ? What is the 
value of a magnificent lamp if it cannot help a man to 
read even the alphabet ? These five foolish virgins had 
splendid lamps, but no oil. The priestly or Popish 
thought lay deep in the core of their very nature ; for 
they turned round to the others and said, Give us of your 
oil, for we have none in our lamps ; thus applying to the 
church for grace, instead of applying to the Lord of the 
church, who alone can give grace and glory. But these 
five wise ones, like thorough Protestants, answered, " Not 
so ; lest there be not enough for us and you " — every 
Christian has grace only sufficient for himself — we have 
not an atom to spare ; but we will do all we can, namely, 
invite you to apply to the great Master and get oil for 
yourselves. They were sensible enough to take the ad- 
vice : they tried the church, and the church had none to 
give them ; they then determined to go to the Master ; 
but while they went — and here was their awful state — 
the door was shut, the harvest was past, the summer 
ended, and they were not saved. ct While they went to 
buy, the bridegroom came ; and they that were ready," 
the five wise, " went in with him to the marriage ; and the 
door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, 
saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and 
said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not. Watch, 
therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour where- 
in the Son of man cometh.'' Such is the graphic picture 
of the visible church. I would not dare to say that half 
the visible church is unconverted, and that half is convert- 
ed ; that is neither the end nor the spirit of the parable ; 



222 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



but it is certainly evident that the Lord comes, and in 
some silent midnight the cry will be heard echoed from 
mouth to mouth, "Behold the bridegroom cometh." We 
know not when ; for we can neither specify the hour nor 
fix the time, because the elements of calculation are so 
difficult and indefinite, but we know it is near. Most re- 
flecting Christians believe that we are approaching what 
I have called the Saturday evening of the world's long 
and weary week, that things are rapidly accumulating to 
a crisis. Nobody can look abroad upon the earth and not 
see the portentous peculiarity, the startling solemnity and 
intensity of the age in which we live. But what is to be 
our inference? "Lift up your heads," believers, "for 
your redemption draweth nigh." Do I address one who 
has no oil in his lamp? — do not apply to the priest, nor 
to the sacrament, nor to the church ; none of these have 
any to spare ; But before the bridegroom comes, and be- 
fore the doors are shut, apply to the Lord of oil — to use 
a Scripture phrase — apply to the anointed Priest, Proph- 
et and King, and he will give you the oil of grace and 
of glory also : " that unction from the Holy One which 
teacheth all things." 

Blessed thought, however, in the midst of those scenes 
the people of God are safe ! When you look upon the 
events of the earth, and begin to feel dismayed, turn to 
the 8th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and read it, 
beginning with "no condemnation," and ending with " nei- 
ther death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor pow- 
ers, nor things present, northings to come, nor height, nor 
depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us 
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 
Beautifully has the apostle condensed all into one text : 



THE HARVEST OF THE EARTH. 



223 



M The grace of God " — that is the oil that we need — 
" the grace of God teacheth us," first, " to deny ungodli- 
ness and worldly lusts ; " and secondly, " to live soberly, 
righteously, godly in this present world and lastly, 
" to look for that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of 
Jesus Christ, our great God and Saviour. 



224 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



LECTURE XIV. 

THE NEW HEAVEN, AND NEW EARTH. 

What a glorious prospect comes within the horizon of our 
view ! — all Satan and sin introduced fleeing as mists be- 
fore the eternal sunshine, and all that Christ has pur- 
chased and prepared set before us and advancing into pos- 
session. 

M And I saw a new heaven and a new earth ; for the first heaven and 
the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea. ' ' — 
Revelation xxi. 1. 

We have seen the severe but short storm which burst up- 
on a peaceful earth at the close of the thousand years. 
We have seen the triumphant safety of the people of God 
by his grace and strength, notwithstanding the fury of those 
that assailed them ; we have seen the devil that deceived 
them cast into the lake of fire. We saw for a moment, as 
the seer saw it on the JEge&n. Sea, the revelation of the 
great white throne, reflecting from its surface of awful 
purity the least shadow of sin ; and One seated on that 
throne from whose face the heavens and the earth with all 
their glory sunk into insignificance and paleness ; we saw 
the books were opened containing the mysterious records 
of generations that have passed away ; the unwritten re- 
cords that are stored in human hearts, and the written acts 



THE NEW HEAVEN, AND NEW EARTH. 225 

that are visible to human eyes ; we have seen the issues 
of the judgment according to the books ; and we have wit- 
nessed the sea, in language unspeakably sublime, giving 
up from its bosom the dead that were in it ; death and 
hell, or death and the unseen world, or soul and body, 
cast away by that awful sentence — too awful to be spoken 
had not God, the God of love, written it — " Whosoever 
was not found in the book of life was cast into the lake of 
fire ; " that is, whosoever did not believe, whosoever pre- 
ferred to be saved in his own way rather than God's way, 
whosoever would not submit to let God save him, was cast 
into the lake of fire ; this is the second death. From the 
midst of these scenes of fearful grandeur we see emerg- 
ing, at the very commencement of the millennial day — 
for I believe that the 21st and 22d chapters of this book 
are the photographic portraits of what is inaugurated at the 
commencement of the millennial epoch, and not of a total- 
ly different economy — a ne v w heaven and a new earth 
(for the whole Apocalypse, which means ct an unveiling," is 
the seer beholding a panorama from heaven sweep past him 
on earth, and as one part passes away, another part comes 
up, begininng at Patmos, and terminating at Paradise re- 
turned) : "I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the 
first heaven and the first earth were passed away." Does 
this mean that all our existing economy, material and mun- 
dane, is swept out, and that another and totally fresh ma- 
terial economy supersedes it ? No, oertainly not. There 
is reason to believe from other passages of Scripture that 
no such extinction of the old and creation of the new will 
occur. Science itself proves there is no such thing as an- 
nihilation. I do not believe that an immortal soul can or 
will ever be annihilated. I do not believe that a stone, a 
10* 



226 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



tree, a human body, or any God- created thing can be an- 
nihilated. Change of form, but not extinction of being, 
is the law everything material is liable to. If it said, " I 
saw another heaven and another earth," then I could un- 
derstand that the present earth and its surrounding mun- 
dane economy had all been summarily removed from our 
present sphere or orbit. But he says: "I saw a new 
heaven and a new earth." It is perfectly parallel with a 
passage which is familiar to us all : "If any man be in 
Christ, he is " — what ? " a new creature ; ' ; but when a 
man is born again and made a Christian, he does not lose 
his personal identity ; he does not cease to be that bundle 
of memories, and thoughts, and fears, and hopes that he 
was before. The old nature purified, not another nature 
created, makes the new man. So the old earth and the 
old heaven purified, not destroyed — disinfected of sin, 
not disorganized — fulfils and makes actual the splendid 
vision of the seer in the Apocalypse. Why should this 
earth be destroyed ? I think it would be a compliment 
paid, or rather a concession made, to Satan infinitely great- 
er than he has earned. At the issue of the winding up 
of all things, Satan will get nothing but what he can fair- 
ly claim as his own. Whatever Satan has introduced on 
earth will be given him and go with him to the lake of 
fire ; but whatever God has made will be snatched from his 
tyranny, restamped with the signature of redeeming love, 
and shine forth more glorious and beautiful than it was 
before. There is nothing in this material earth, original- 
ly belonging to it, that is intrinsically wrong. Take sin 
out of it ; lay the fever that racks it perpetually ; extir- 
pate evil at its core; let the consecrating hand of the 
Great High Priest wave over it ; and more than its lost 



THE NEW HEAVEN, AND NEW EARTH. 227 

glory will return — it will shine the loveliest star in the 
firmament, the most beautiful orb in the sisterhood of 
worlds, infinitely the most interesting ; for what planet or 
orb in the universe has an atmosphere that the Son of God 
breathed ; fountains of which the Son of God drank ; a 
river in which the Son of God was baptised ? What orb 
has a Gethsemane, a Calvary, a Tabor, a Mount Zion, a 
Mount of Olives, touched, and consecrated because touched, 
by sacred feet ? Oh, it would be a terrible calamity were 
such Peniels, the scenes of such grand traditions, the me- 
morials of such historic incidents, the footprints of so 
splendid a presence, to be for ever annihilated ! it would 
be a gap in creation, it would be a loss to the universe. 
But so great a catastrophe is impossible ; it cannot be, 
and God has not said it will be. What then is meant by 
this new heaven and new earth ? It is just the fulfilment 
of the prophecy in the 65th chapter of Isaiah : " behold, I 
create new heavens and a new earth. 1 ' It is the realiza- 
tion of Peter's expectation : 11 Nevertheless we, according 
to his promise, look for a new heaven and a new earth, 
wherein dwelleth righteousness." It is the restoration 
and the regeneration of the earth ; what is called in the 
Gospel its nultyyevf-aia. It is a result essential as a com- 
plement and a companion of the doctrine of the resurrec- 
tion. If we are to have material bodies (and if we have 
not, we shall not rise as men ; for the definition of a man 
is soul and body,) if we are to live in a material organiza- 
tion there must be a material world. Dr. Chalmers 
writes a whole sermon to prove this, that the future will 
be a Paradise of sense, but not — in his own peculiar 
style — a Paradise of sensuality ; and with conclusive ar- 
gument he combats the vulgar notion that matter is essen- 



228 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



tially polluted, and that whatever we can touch, and see, 
and handle, and hear, is all irreparably bad, and ought to 
be annihilated. Such extinction is altogether unwarrant- 
ed ; it is a notion alien to the spirit and words of* the Bi- 
ble. The scriptural, or biblical view is the redemption of 
the soul, the redemption of the body, and the redemption 
of nature. Hence this orb, when it takes its place amid 
the family or sisterhood from which it has been long ex- 
iled and alienated, and is replaced in harmony with them, 
will bear not the signature of creative power, which it 
once bare, but the more august signature of redeeming 
love, which no other has besides ; and in proportion as re- 
demption excels creation, this earth will excel all others, 
for they have had no fall, they have had no redemption ; 
they have no Paradise lost, and they will not know the 
sweetness and beauty of a Paradise regained. 

In handling these words, and in trying to throw some 
light upon them, let us inquire, first, what is implied by 
the new heaven ; secondly, by the new earth ; and third- 
ly, the no more sea. 

What is meant by the new heaven ? Heaven, in its 
scriptural use, is simply that which wraps our world, and 
immediately relates to the mundane economy to which we 
belong ; while heaven is used in one sense as the im- 
mediate chancel of the universe, where Christ is. Kurtz, 
a German divine, accepts the discovery made by Maedler. 
a German astronomer, that Alcyone, one of the Pleiades, 
is the central sun around which our sun. with all the 
planets, and thousands of other suns with their planets are 
ceaselessly revolving, and so may be the metropolis of 
creation. Our sun, and moon, and planets, are a group 
not only moving relatively to each other, but all of them 



THE NEW HEAVEN, AND NEW EARTH. 



229 



moving as a cluster round a great central sun ; and it may 
be the palace of the Great King — so that while present 
spiritually wherever " two or three are gathered together 
in his name,'* personally and bodily, with the marks of 
the nails on his hands, he may be in some far-off central 
orb, sending forth his will and inspiration over the length 
and breadth of the boundless and the unsounded universe. 
But whether this be so or not, the heavens according to 
the usage of Scripture, apart altogether from the imme- 
diate dwelling-place of God, means the whole surrounding 
mundane economy under which and before which we now 
play a part ; it embraces all external to the earth that sin 
has infected. The heavens would not be made new if they 
were not infected ; but where Christ dwells there is no 
material imperfection or moral infection. Heaven denotes 
the atmosphere — all that is around our earth and related 
to it. Some think that sin has smitten orbs beyond the 
confines of our earth ; and it is a very curious fact that as 
far as we can see into the moon — and we can see any ob- 
ject 100 feet high — we gather that it is a world wrecked, 
convulsed, and torn ; as if sin in its rebound from earth 
had smitten its patient and beautiful satellite, and shatter- 
ed it into pieces also. But whatever or wherever may be 
the limits of the extent of the sin that has infected our 
world, the heavens so far as they are affected by it will be 
made new. The sunshine shall no more be darkene 1 by a 
dense intercepting cloud ; it shall no more scorch the earth 
with tropical fervor, nor will its absence freeze and chill 
the earth with polar cold. The sea will no more be rent 
by tempests and hurricanes, and the air will no more be 
shattered by the lightning, and reverberate the thunder 
that follows at the lightning's heels. The sirocco will no 



230 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



longer scorch the garden into a desert, and the euroclydon, 
that wrecked the ship of Paul in the Mediterranean, will 
no more beat ; the forest will no more be stripped of its 
foliage, nor the rose of its petals. Frosts will not nip the 
young and beautiful buds of spring, or blight the hopes 
and the prospects of summer and autumn. Sun, and 
moon, and stars, will no longer remain far off and impen- 
etrable mysteries; and the comet, that people used to think 
shook pestilence and plague from its wings, will be found, 
what I have no doubt it is, one of God's beneficent mes- 
sengers, conveying the expressions of his sympathy and 
support to the orbs of the sky ; and the whole heaven will 
lap and fold this recovered earth in its warm bosom, and 
all things will be restored and made new. 

But we are told there shall not only be a new heaven, 
but a new earth ; that is, as I have already explained, not 
another earth, just as a new creature is not another crea- 
ture. Our earth, when thus made new, will be no more 
the place of graves. How sad when one walks into the- 
country, or enters abbey, church, or cathedral, to see how 
death has ploughed up every green sod ; how the death- 
damps lie upon flag-stone, tessellated pavement, and en- 
caustic tile ; how every village, and city, and cemetery 
records the deep and indelible fact that death has been 
here ; how earth groans, in the language of Paul, and 
yearns to be delivered from the pain of receiving her dead 
children day by day into her bosom ! The young, the 
beautiful, the good, the brave, death strikes with impar- 
tial stroke, and the grave, unsatisfied, receives all. Sure- 
ly this is not meant to be perpetual — surely it is an ab- 
normal, and unnatural, and monstrous condition of things ; 
and therefore if God's word be true, when the last enemy 



THE NEW HEAVEN, AXD XEW EARTH. 



231 



shall be destroyed, every footprint of sin. and sorrow, and 
death, left upon the sands of time will be effaced and de- 
stroyed also. Earth will no longer when made new be an 
arena on which exasperated nations fight, and kill, and 
strike down each other. From the days of Cain to the 
days of the Kaiser and the Czar the earth has been the 
arena of ceaseless battles. The sword has certainly not 
yet been turned into the pruning-hook, nor the spear into 
the ploughshare. From Marathon and Therruopylas to 
"Waterloo ; and from Waterloo to Inkermann, Balaklava. 
Magenta, and Solferino, the earth has been ploughed by 
the wheels of artillery, torn up by shot and shell, and 
broken by the enginery of war. There is not a green field 
in Europe that is not a soldier's sepulchre : there is not a 
spot that takes a place in the roll of nations of the earth 
that has not been the scene of slaughter and of bloodshed. 
This was never meant to be ; and hence the prediction is. 
when earth shall be made new the nations shall learn war 
no more. It is not the soldier that is the cause of war ; 
it is the sin that is in your heart and mine. It is not gun- 
powder that does the mischief ; it is the wickedness that 
lurks in the human heart. The cure for war is not the 
disbanding of the army and the burning of the navy ; but 
the regeneration of wicked human hearts : and whenever 
that regeneration is achieved and the earth is made new, 
then the nations shall learn war no more. 

When the earth is made new, it shall no more be the 
place of what is perhaps a melancholy, and what in anoth- 
er point of view is a beneficent sight — of hospitals, in- 
firmaries, and asylums. When one enters an hospital, 
and visits bed after bed of the sick and the suffering, will 
anybody tell me that God made that ? and when one visits, 



232 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



as I have once, and would not again unless absolute duty 
compelled me, a lunatic asylum, how awful the spectacle 
that it presents ! for terrible as must be a battle-field on 
the morrow of the fight, yet ten times more awful is the 
wreck of broken and shattered minds. These institutions 
then, created by beneficence it is perfectly true, but be- 
neficence drawn out by the calamity which their roofs 
shelter, will all be swept away ; not because man is less 
beneficent or God less merciful, but because the inhabitant 
shall no more say, "lam sick;" and in the beautiful 
words which are contained in this very chapter, words 
it is said which the poet could never read without weep- 
ing : 4 ' God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; 
and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor cry- 
ing, neither shall there be any more pain ; for the former 
things are all passed away." 

AY hen this new earth shall appear, there will be no 
more — what is a great blot and stain upon it — gaols, 
and prisons and Bridewells. We see at this moment, as 
schools, day schools and ragged schools advance, that pris- 
ons become less necessary. But at that day, when there 
shall be no ragged boys on the golden streets ; when there 
shall be none who are uneducated, untaught, and unsancti- 
fied, there will be no punative administration there ; there 
will be no gaol, nor prison, nor blot, nor stain, that indi- 
cates the very fearful fact that sometimes man becomes so 
bad that his sin breaks out with intolerable violence, and 
we are obliged to shut up the leper in a dungeon, or a 
gaol or a prison, or a Bridewell, lest society should be 
broken to pieces by his misconduct. There will be no 
prison nor gaol. 

When the earth is made new, there will be no deserts. 



THE NEW HEAVEN, AND NEW EARTH. 233 



It is a strange fact, and one of the proofs that the earth 
cannot now be as God made it, that upwards of two-thirds 
of it are covered with deserts, and wildernesses, and 
marshes, and water. There will be no deserts then, when 
the earth shall be made new. The instant man sinned 
(and geology does not disprove it, ) the rose faded on its 
stalk, the garden became a desert ; and with the sweat of 
his brow, and the tears of his weeping eyes, and the labor 
of his hands, he went forth to reclaim from earth's re- 
luctant bosom a handful of stunted fruits to be his food 
till he should return to the earth from which he was taken, 
and the soul should rise to God who made it. But under 
the warmth of that blessed sunshine that shall one day 
fall upon this earth, literally I believe the desert shall re- 
joice, and literally the wilderness shall blossom as the rose. 
Evil shall not gain the day ; the devil — a usurper, an in- 
truder, an invader — shall not have the victory ; all that 
he wronged shall be righted, and all he has destroyed shall 
be restored ; and the world will close with a Paradise vast- 
ly more beautiful than that with which it began. 

When this earth shall be made new, and all things in it, 
those deserts that sometimes exist in human hearts will 
cease. There is a wilderness often within as well as a 
wilderness without. Hearts that now break shall then 
bound ; sorrows that tears are the symptoms of. but the 
faint relief, shall never be there. Heartquakes, worse than 
earthquakes, shall be no more. There are secret places in 
human hearts on which shadows lie cold and dark, ineffacea- 
ble till they are dispersed by the sunburst of high eternal 
noon. On many a noble spirit, thrown into uncongenial 
circumstances, sorrow lies like an avalanche, that no sun- 
beam touches and no warmth dissolves. Those ideals of 



234 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



excellence we had formed, and learnt how feeble we were 
by failing to realize them, will all be actualized then. It 
has been said — 

" Man to man was never known ; 
Heart to heart did never meet ; 
We are columns left alone 

Of a temple once complete." 

But if any of you feel this shadow, or wander thus in 
the desert, or taste this bitter grief, to you I say : 11 Let not 
your hearts be troubled ; ye believe in God, believe also 
in me." Evil shall not have the mastery; weeping may 
endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. The 
tides of evil steadily ebb ; the great spring- tide of light, 
and love, and peace as steadily advances ; all things shall 
be made new ; a new heaven and a new earth, wherein 
dwelleth righteousness, comes nearer every day ; and with 
righteousness that dwelleth there, her sisters, peace and 
joy in the Holy Ghost, will be there also. 

There will be "no more sea." Many have been per- 
plexed and puzzled by this feature ; and some writers on 
this very prophecy have come to the conclusion that the 
sea will be annihilated ; that it is not needed in the mil- 
lennial state ; and it will therefore dry up. I agree very 
heartily with a Collect in the Church of England service, 
one amid many very beautiful, which begins thus : "0 
God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made." " The 
sea is his and he made it." If God hates nothing he has 
made, he will destroy nothing that he has made, and there- 
fore the sea will not be destroyed. The expression " no 
more sea " is equivalent to no more night. If this earth 
is to continue a round orb there will be night and day : by 
shifting the angle of inclination of the earth, it is possible 



THE XEW HEAVEN, AXD XEW EARTH. 285 

that might be modified immensely ; but still by the very 
necessity of the thing there will be light and shadow, there 
will be night and day : only that perhaps the glory that 
lights it up with surpassing splendor will shine, as it did 
on Mount Tabor, with effulgence so intense that the very 
sun will be put out by its brightness, as a star is put out 
by the sunrise, and so there will be no more night. 

There will be no more sea." may mean, that with the 
first heaven and first earth that passed away the first sea 
passes away too, and therefore that what has happened to 
the ocean of evil or of calamity through man's sin will 
then be put an end to. The extinction of the sea we 
think would be sad. To extinguish that magnificent thing 

o c o 

that like a shining and glorious' circle, or zone, -surrounds 
the earth, would be a great and apparently needless ca- 
lamity. There is something unspeakably grand in the sea, 
with its bays, its headlands, its promontories, and shelv- 
ing sands, and flowing and ebbing tides. It is impossible 
to for cret that dull sound — that moaning dirge heard all 
night, as if it were the cry of some stricken and sorrowing 
creature, like all the sounds of nature, in the minor key. 
At times it wakes into its thunder-roll, when it smites the 
shore, and recoils in music magnificent as the jubilee of a 
mighty multitude that no man can number. Nor can one 
fail to admire that ceaseless oscillation of its unquiet bo- 
som,. more like the pulse of life than mere mechanical mo- 
tion, or when the tide rises with its peculiar sound as the 
waves strike the shore, and again retire, taking into the 
sea's hospitable bosom shells and living things innumera- 
ble from the sand. The interchange of lights and inter- 
play of sounds in the ocean are so impressive and beauti- 
ful that few would like to part with that noble portion of 



236 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



creation, the sea ; nor is there reason to conclude it will 
be destroyed. 

' The ocean looketh up to heaven 

As 'twere a living thing ; 
The homage of its waves seems given 
In ceaseless worshipping. 

** They kneel upon the sloping sand, 
As bends the human knee ; 
A beautiful and tireless band, 
The priesthood of the sea." 

What then is meant by the expression, " There shall be 
no more sea ? " It means a new sea, just as there is a 
new earth. The sea shall no more be agitated by the 
breath of the tempest, and lashed into fury, so as to ob- 
struct the intercourse and endanger the safety of mankind. 
Whatever miracles Christ wrought were redemptive and 
restorative ; and each was so far an earnest of the full ac- 
complishment of what he will achieve at last. Thus, 
when he raised the dead, it was an earnest of that day 
when all the dead shall be raised ; when he opened the 
eyes of the blind, it was an earnest of that era when all 
eyes shall see, and none shall be sealed ; when he walked 
upon the sea, may it not be also a redemptive act and a 
prophecy that as he in our very humanity walked uponihe 
bosom of the ocean, and found it a smooth and beautiful 
promenade, that we too shall do so ? And when he" laid 
his hand upon the ocean's mane, as a rider lays his hand 
upon the neck of his steed and quiets it, and the sea be- 
came a great calm — may not that be an earnest of the 
day when he will wave his hand over its restless waste of 
waters, and it will become still as an infant sleeping in its 
first cradle? Jesus walking on the sea, Jesus calming the 



THE NEW HEAVEN, AND NEW EARTH. 237 

sea, Jesus frequently sleeping and sailing on the sea, may 
all be the earnests of the healing of the sea. Like the heav- 
ens, it will be made new by being purified, like the earth, by 
being disinfected of evil, and so shall be earth's grandest 
zone, and nature's beautiful and most impressive object. 
It will be no more the burial-place of nations. What a 
churchyard, if I may use the expression, has the great 
ocean become ! It is the burial-ground of mankind. 
The poor invalid going to breathe the air of a balmier 
land dies, and is buried in the ocean's depths ; the emi- 
grant ship, with those who have bid farewell to the blue 
hills and the homesteads of their native land, founders at 
sea, and that ship sinks — the silent coffin of hundreds. 
The sailor drops from the mast, and the sea becomes his 
grave, and the sea-weed his shroud, and the ceaseless 
chimes of the waves his requiem. But, glorious thought ! 
the sea shall give up its dead ; not a redeemed Christian 
sleeps in its silent depths who shall not hear the roll of 
the last trump ; and if we are permitted to see the spec- 
tacle of the sheeted dead coming forth from the graves of 
a thousand years, what will be the grandeur of the spec- 
tacle of thousands of dead pouring up from the depths of 
the ocean, and ascending immediately to Him who is the 
resurrection and the life, and who liveth for ever and for 
ever ! Very beautifully has one sung of the sea in these 
words. Mrs. Hemans says : — 

" What wealth untold, 
Far down, and shining through its stillness lies ! 
Thou hast the starry gems, the burning gold, 
Won from ten thousand royal argosies. 
Sweep o'er thy spoils, thou wild and wrathful main ! 
Earth claims not these again. 
Give back the lost and lovely ! — those for whom 



238 



THE GKEAT CONSUMMATION. 



The place was kept at board and hearth so long ; 

The prayer went up through midnight's breathless gloom, 

And the vain yearning woke 'midst festal song ! 

Hold fast thy buried isles, thy towers o'erthrown ; 

But all is not thine own. 

To thee the love of woman hath gone down ; 

Hark flow thy tides o'er manhood's noble head, 

O'er youth's bright locks, and beauty's flowery crown ; 

Yet must thou hear a voice — Restore the dead ! 

Earth shall reclaim her precious things from thee — 

Restore the dead, thou Sea ! " 

When all these then shall be restored, and the mists 
swept off the Eden of the earth, God's voice will be heard 
in the murmuring brooks, in the resounding waves of the 
deep, in the hum of insects and in the song of birds; and 
the blessedness of earth shall shade away into the blessed- 
ness of heaven, and the glory of time into the richer glory 
of eternity ; and this earth shall lift up its head, crowned 
as never queen was crowned before ; and sun, and stars, 
and sea, and rivers shall be her bridesmaids, singing with 
her the bridal song of Moses and the Lamb. " Glory to 
God in the highest ; on earth peace, good will to men," 
will be no longer a prophecy sung by a handful of angels 
on the plains of Bethlehem, but an anthem peal lifted up 
by the voices of a great multitude that no man can num- 
ber. Then heaven and earth shall be reunited and restored 
as one. At present there is a gap between them : the in- 
stant that sin struck it, God withdrew ; but as soon as the 
Gospel was preached in Eden, links of union were re- 
stored ; Jacob saw angels ascending and descending from 
heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven. Abraham was 
visited by troops of angels. Bishop Pearson, who writes 
a magnificent treatise on the Creed, and was one of the 
most powerful intellects that ever appeared in any church, 



THE NEW HEAVEN, AND NEW EARTH. 



239 



thinks that even now the comuunion of saints in conse- 
quence of Christ's resurrection and ascension, is not a 
mere imagination, but a reality; and he thinks those that 
have gone before may visit us on earth, and though we do 
not see them, yet they may know what is being transact- 
ed here. He says : {i I have conversed with a saint as 
such when he lived on earth ; I must still have communion 
with him when he is departed hence ; because the founda- 
tion of that communion cannot be destroyed by death." 

His idea is not that we are to worship them ; not per- 
haps that we hear or see them : but that they have com- 
munion with us, on this ground — that they are equally 
members of Christ's body ; that they are equally knit to- 
gether in the same union, communion, and fellowship ; 
and that what separates us from our children, our fath- 
ers, and our mothers, and our sisters, and our broth- 
ers who have left us, is no vast space or chasm it will take 
years to cross. Heaven at present is simply a condition. 
The redeemed are now not in another place so much as in 
another condition. There is one instance in Scripture 
where the redeemed in heaven speak down to listening pil- 
grims upon earth ; it is at the close of this book : " The 
Spirit and the Bride say, Come." He refers to the 
church in heaven calling down the steeps of time to the 
church upon earth, and saying, Come ; come up and taste 
our joy, and join our fellowship, and so restore the com- 
munion that has been broken and interrupted. Perhaps 
those that have left us may sometimes listen on the other 
side of the veil, if they can hear what we are saying ; 
they may sometimes gaze with longing eyes in order to 
see what those they still love and whom they left behind 
are doing ; and if they do not see, or if they cannot hear, 



240 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



angels, who are ceaselessly descending and ceaselessly as- 
cending, must tell them in heaven many an interesting 
and bright story of sublime transformations on earth. 
There are angels in every sanctuary ; angels perhaps go 
with us to our homes ; an angel sometimes whispers to 
you in the counting-house, or place of business, in the 
market, and on the streets — "are they not ministering 
spirits," that is, helps, " to them that are the heirs of 
salvation?" But that communion which was once so 
complete has been broken ; it is conjecture, not certainty, 
how far the lower and upper worlds may meet and mingle. 
Perhaps as sea and land interlace, the world of spirits 
and the world of those who are in the flesh may intermin- 
gle also. We are now in the cold, gloomy crypt ; they 
are above the crypt, in the sunny, beautiful, and glorious 
cathedral. We too, if we are saved now, shall be raised, 
and glorified, and mingle our songs and our voices with 
theirs ; and so be for ever with the Lord. 

Do you ever look off this cold, shattered, gloomy world, 
even in its sunniest spots and in its most festal hours, to 
yon bright, beautiful, and glorious world that we can see 
through the telescope that John ha3 given us in Patmos ? 
Surely, surely, we are not so happy that we can afford to 
lose such a spring of happiness as the hope of glorious 
things in reversion. If you are heir to estates, or to a 
grand historic title, do you not frequently look up from 
your present condition to what you have in prospect ? and 
do you not draw from the future thoughts of joy into the 
gloomy and the sorrowful present ? What is this apoca- 
lyptic picture given for ? Is it a mere piece of poetry ? 
Is it a mere sketch to amuse ? No ; it consists of flowers 
gathered from your own happy, happy land. It is laden 



THE NEW HEAVEN, AND NEW EARTH. 241 

with the fragrance of roses, that sin has not blighted, and 
that evil has not blasted. It is a handful of its sunshine, 
given to warm cold hearts, and to brighten dark minds, 
and so straggling hopes will be cheered, and drooping 
hearts encouraged to lean upon the hope of that rest that 
remaineth for the people of God. All men have plenty 
during the week to plague them ; and therefore hundreds 
come within the walls of the sanctuary thankful that the 
weary six days of the week are over. You do not want 
metaphysics, or mere speculative, hair-splitting controver- 
sies. You need refreshment and rest. Harassed, and 
balked, and fretted, and disappointed, and sick of this 
world's conflict, it is not useless to learn the sublime les- 
son : " Lift up your heads ■ for your redemption draweth 
nigh." 



11 



242 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



LECTURE XV. 

THE APOCALYPTIC CITY. 

As the seer individualizes the objects he has grouped to- 
gether, we see more clearly the splendid attractions of the 
future. Here. " the city" comes into view. 

** And I John saw the holy oity, new Jerusalem, coming down from God 
out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." — 
Revelation xxi. 2. 

We have concluded, in common with those who have a 
claim to be among the wisest and the soberest interpreters 
of the prophetic record, that the earth on which we live, 
with all its encompassing economy, is not, as Satan would 
have it, and as false prophets sometimes predict it will be, 
to be so consumed and dissipated as to leave but the base- 
less fabric of a vision ; but that it is to be, as God's word 
seems clearly to indicate, regenerated, restored, recon- 
structed, covered with a lustre before which the lustre of 
ancient Paradise shall pale ; and invested with a beauty 
eye hath not seen, and resonant with a joy which ear hath 
not heard, and the subject of a transformation which heart 
hath not conceived ; and which it has not even been a 
prophet's privilege or evangelist's inspiration fully to em- 
body and to express. The very essence of Christianity, 
so far as it deals with what is external to man, is the 



THE APOCALYPTIC CITY. 



243 



annihilation of nothing, and the consecration and the re- 
generation of all. Whatever God made is redeemed, and 
shall be restored. Whatever Satan has introduced shall 
be handed over to Satan, and made a present to him for 
ever. God made the earth beautiful, and holy, and good ; 
and the dim memorials that survive are faint, faint re- 
miniscences of a glory and a beauty that perished that 
hour in which Eve and Adam sinned against God. Even 
in our cold summers, when the earth is bursting into 
bloom, it seems as if it strove to reach the glory it once 
had, and to anticipate that greater glory which one day it 
shall wear : when it covers itself with all sweet flowers, 
and fills the air, the delighted air, with their perfume, and 
charms the delighted eye with their beauty. I know but 
two things upon earth in their nature not moral that 
remind me of ancient Paradise; the beautiful but fading 
flowers of June, and the bright diamonds and precious 
stones, those amaranthine flowers, that do not wither or die. 
These seem the memorials of Paradise ; perhaps spared 
to us in God's great love to remind us what a splendid estate 
sin lost; but prophecies to us of a yet more splendid 
inheritance to which Christ the Saviour will introduce us. 

Having spoken of the earth and its economy as destined 
to continue, we read here of something that descends and 
settles upon the earth ; it comes down in its completeness 
from heaven, and remains upon the earth, what it will be 
for ever, the metropolis of Christendom. In one of Dr. 
Chalmers' magnificent sermons he has tried to show the 
great moral significance of this earth of ours. Some 
sceptic astronomers have talked about it as so tiny a speck 
that it is impossible to believe that God ever could have 
become incarnate and died for it. It is so little that he 



244 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



might have expunged it, and it never would have been 
missed amidst the starry orbs of the universe. He says 
very justly that material mass is not the test and the 
criterion of moral importance. We believe a very 
limited spot may be fraught with everlasting issues. 
That hill called Calvary is a little hill in Jerusalem, and 
on it there was erected a cross — two cross beams of no 
value ; but what a glorious spot is that ! a spot to which 
countless orbs will look in concentric circles, and marvel 
at the love that gave a Christ to die, and marvel more 
at the love that hung upon that cross, and died even 
for his enemies. Westminster Palace is a very splendid 
building ; though, as if to show how all things must fade 
and die, it is no sooner built and its beauty perfected 
than decay has set upon it — as if to teach man that he 
cannot in this world create a permanent structure ; that 
earth's noblest edifices, the world's most magnificent 
cathedrals, are the tents of a day, not the mansions that 
endure for ever and ever. At Westminster the interests 
of the world are transacted. Six or seven hundred 
noblemen and gentlemen meet together in the House of 
Lords and in the House of Commons ; they seem to be, 
some of them, not very anxious, nor very much in earnest, 
nor very grave ; but upon the votes of those noblemen 
and gentlemen depend peace or war, the prosperity or the 
ruin of empires ; and out of that House which does not 
cover many acres, go forth words, winged words, that 
convulse cabinets, shake nations, or give confidence to 
royal and troubled breasts ; showing us that a very small 
material space may be the repeating centre of very 
momentous and enduring consequences. In the same 
ymanner this small earth may be the orb, that shall itself 



THE APOCALYPTIC CITY. 



245 



occupy the largest interest in the minds of the inhabitants 
of myriads of worlds. Countless orbs, with their count- 
less inhabitants, will for ever and ever look down upon 
this very earth ; and they will see in it themes that never 
part with their freshness ; reminiscences that never can 
be obliterated, associations that will waken their hearts, 
and give them new songs, and stir their deepest sym- 
pathies, and that for ever and for ever. The truth is, 
this earth of ours is the most intensely interesting spot in 
the whole universe. I never can believe that the soil 
which a Saviour trod, that the scene on which a Saviour 
died, that the spot on which a Saviour was born — 
places so intensely interesting — are to be effaced ; and 
that the devil, who extinguished the beauties of Paradise, 
shall be suffered to efface and annihilate the scenes that 
tell the story of Paradise regained. I believe that in 
the centre of this there will be one spot yet richer and 
more glorious than all; it is here called " a city," the 
new Jerusalem ; " "a kingdom that cannot be moved ; " 
44 an inheritance incorruptible;" "a house not made 
with hands." 

It is most interesting to trace throughout the Scripture 
the outlines of the vast space occupied by the hopes, or 
the tidings, or the predictions of a city. Jerusalem, the 
ancient, the beautiful, the burden of prophecy, the key- 
note of song; whose streets were trodden by kings' and 
prophets' feet, and trodden yet more by the feet of Him 
vho is Kins of kings — Jerusalem, the roofs of which 
sheltered David, and David's greater and more kingly 
Son ; from the springs of which Jesus drank ; the sins 
of which he so touchingly rebuked, and the fate of which 
he pronounced from the Mount of Olives, amid tears such 



246 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



as never fell upon the pavement of city, or capital, or 
hamlet — Jerusalem has sunk like a ship in full sail at 
sea, and all its magnificence is a thing of the past ; and as 
if to show the extent, and depth, and greatness of the 
desolation, the mosque of Omar stands where the temple 
of Solomon was ; and the cry of the Muezzin, " Great is 
God, and Mahomet is his prophet," is heard where the 
strains of David's harp broke upon the air, and where the 
magnificent Psalms that David's God inspired were sung 
by the sweet singers of the house of Israel. Never did a 
more beautiful creation appear on the earth than Jerusalem, 
and never did a doom so terrible, so swift, so desolating, 
overtake a city upon earth. That must be no ordinary city 
the very stones of which at this day are kissed daily by 
greyhaired rabbis, while they sing the words — 

" Thy saints take pleasure in its stones ; 
Its very dust to them is dear ; " 

the reminiscences of which walk the earth, and appear m 
all lands like spectral spirits that will not be laid; "the 
city of the Great King ; beautiful for situation, the joy 
of the whole earth ; " of which, says David, " glorious 
things have been spoken." Was that city a naked, dry, 
unsuggestive historical fact, or was it the shadow of good 
things to come ; the type of a vision yet more beautiful, 
but as material, as real, as the type that has passed away ? 
My impression is that it was. Let us mark well in Scrip- 
ture the allusions to this city. In Galatians we read : 
li Jerusalem which is above is free, the mother of us all." 
In the Hebrews we read : " Ye are come unto Mount Zion, 
the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem ; and 
to an innumerable company of angels." We read, again, 



THE APOCALYPTIC CITY. 



247 



of Abraham: "he looked for a city that hath foundations, 
whose builder and whose maker is God." We read in 
Hebrews : " God hath prepared for them a city." And 
the apostle, speaking of our relationship to it. says, 
" Your conversation is in heaven." The word " con- 
versation " is an unhappy translation ; it is the old Saxon 
word, meaning not talking, but citizenship ; the literal 
translation is, " Your citizenship is in heaven." If you 
blot out the word " conversation " in your Bible, and put 
in " citizenship," you have the exact and true idea. So, 
again, says the apostle : " Ye are fellow-citizens of the 
saints, and of the household of faith." l T ou w T ill bear 
with me while I read, because it is more magnificent than 
anything I can say, the picture of this city in the 21st 
chapter of Revelation, in which you will see there a 
minuteness of detail, an architectural minuteness of 
specification, which it would be very difficult to construe 
into a mere figure of speech. It begins at the 10th verse 
of the 21st chapter of Revelation: " And he carried me 
away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and 
showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending 
out of heaven from God, having the glory of God ; and 
her light v/as like unto a stone most precious, even like a 
jasper stone, clear as crystal ; and had a wall great and 
high" — now mark the architectural minuteness, the 
minutiae of the plan ; such minutiae as seem to me un- 
justifiable if it be a mere figure of speech — " and had a 
wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates 
twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the 
names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel ; on 
the east three gates ; on the north three gates ; on the 
south three gates ; and on the west three gates. And the . 



248 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the 
names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. And he that 
talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and 
the gates thereof, and the wall thereof And the city 
lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth ; 
and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand 
furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of 
it are equal. And he measured the wall thereof, an hun- 
dred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure 
of a man, that is, of the angel. And the building of the 
wall of it was of jasper ; and the city was pure gold, like 
unto clear glass. And the foundations of the wall of the 
city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. 
The first foundation was jasper ; the second, sapphire ; 
the third, a chalcedony ; the fourth, an emerald ; the fifth, 
sardonyx; the sixth, sardius ; the seventh, chrysolyte ; 
the eighth, beryl ; the ninth, a topaz ; the tenth, a chry- 
soprasus ; the eleventh, a jacinth ; the twelfth, an ame- 
thyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls ; every 
several gate was of one pearl ; and the street of the city 
was pure gold, as it were transparent glass." 

Then rising from the sketch that the inspired architect 
lays down to the strain that an inspired poet alone can 
give expression to, he says : " And I saw no temple 
therein ; for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are 
the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, 
neither of the moon, to shine in it ; for the glory of God 
did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And 
the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the 
light of it; and the kings of the earth" — which shows 
that kings shall be existing when this is actualized — 
' ' the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor 



THE APOCALYPTIC CITY. 



249 



into "it. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by 
day; for" — and exquisite touch — 11 there shall be no 
night there. And they shall bring the glory and honor 
of the nations into it. And there shall in no wise enter 
into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh 
abomination, or maketh a lie ; but they which are written 
in the Lamb's book of life." The question — we may 
well ask — is, is all this a myth ? Is it a mere figure 
of speech, and nothing more ? If I were one of the 
Essayists and Reviewers I should be bound by the logic 
of my position to pronounce it a mere myth — with them 
everything is a myth that we hold in the Bible to be a 
reality — and I should not be surprised if the seven 
Essayists should ultimately accept the notion of the 
celebrated Irish bishop, Bishop Berkeley, who believed 
that there was no such thing as matter ; and that what 
we see, and handle, and touch, and taste, and feel, are 
merely ideas ; and that we live in an ideal, not material 
world. The bishop was a logician, and he argued, as 
bishops sometimes can, logically ; but the Essayists are 
illogical when they say things that are realities are myths, 
and doctrines on which the strain of our eternal hopes 
lies are merely figures of speech. Such suggestions as 
the following seem to me to show it is not so. I have 
demostrated, as I think clearly, that the earth is to be 
renewed: that just as the soul has its regeneration, and 
as the body has its resurrection, so the earth will have 
what our Lord calls its naliyyeveaia, its new birth. The 
baptism of the last fire shall destroy all that is impure, 
and the consecrating touch of the Great High Priest 
shall restore to it all the beauty it has lost, and more 
than the blessedness it ever had. There is to be a ma- 
ll* 



250 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



terial earth, and we are to be raised with material bodies. 
I believe the resurrection to be, not a myth, but a reality ; 
and that these very bodies, as I have often urged, dis- 
infected of all that is impure, deprived of all that is 
imperfect, and made holy, and perfect, and complete, 
shall be raised; and the infant that you lost, and the 
parent that you buried, and those near and dear ones that 
passed into the shadow of death, shall come forth, retain- 
ing all their characteristic features, all the identities by 
which they were distinguished by you ; so that the future 
will be the happy home, the gathering place, the scene of 
reunion, the restoration of ties that have been snapped 
and separations that have been bewailed: the meeting- 
place of all the people of God. If this earth is thus to 
be restored, and these bodies thus to be rebuilt, is there 
anything absurd in the supposition that there will be a 
material city, a material temple ? Is there anything 
absurd in the beautiful thought that earth shall be spoiled 
of its most precious stones, robbed of its most beautiful 
things, in order to adorn the palace and be the foundations 
of the city of the Great King, that city which has founda- 
tions, whose builder and whose maker is God? I re- 
member reading in a poet who sings many things very 
sweetly that precious stones are all of them the fragments 
of the great explosion in Paradise created by sin ; and 
that they are the remains of what once was universal, 
now the possession of a few — then the fabric and the 
foundations of the glory of the earth itself. The philoso- 
pher's stone, which turned everything to gold, was a 
fancy, a dream ; but I am not sure that there are not in 
the common clay, and in the earth that we turn up, 
latent all the materials of a metallic and mineral beauty 



t 



THF APOCALYPTIC CITY. 



251 



of which we have no conception. Out of the common 
clay we can bring a precious metal, and perhaps the 
grains and fragments of the pristine glory may be all 
intermingled with the decay and debris that has subse- 
quently arisen ; and that the last fire shall burn the dross, 
while the beautiful, the permanent, the Divine shall ap- 
pear in more than its ancient lustre. Is there therefore 
anything unworthy of the Great King, or unworthy of 
God, in this restoration of all things, when ruby, and 
diamond, and chalcedony, and amethyst, and sapphire, 
shall not be tiny sparkles set by the jeweller in gold for 
noble hands to wear and kingly eyes to prize, but shall 
appear in rocks grander than the Pyramids, and resplen- 
dent with a beauty and a glory of which we have but a 
dim and imperfect conception now ? Men are beset with 
the foolish notion that such things are altogether un- 
worthy of God. Then it was unworthy of God to make 
the earth at all ; it was unworthy of God to make 
precious stones at all, or to make the stars — those orbs 
that are sprinkled over the plains of infinitude, to our 
eyes like shining tiny lights ; worlds, with different 
density to ours, but still worlds of matter. Herschel and 
the great astronomers of our age can positively weigh 
them ; they can tell you the weight of Jupiter, or 
Saturn, or Venus, or the moon; they can tell you its 
density and size ; they can demonstrate to you it is 
matter. And many of these orbs may be the abodes of 
people that have never fallen ; but whether they be so or 
not, they were made by God ; and if it is not unworthy 
of God to make a world of matter, and to shape it into 
all its beautiful developments as the potter shapes the 
clay, is it unworthy of a God who has redeemed the soul, 



252 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



and no less redeemed the body, to redeem the earth, and 
reconsecrate and reconstitute it in more than its pristine 
magnificence and glory ? 

But I will not dwell upon the mere materialism of the 
picture. The future may be a world of sense, but not a 
world of sensuality ; that is, it may be matter, and yet 
nothing corrupt, imperfect, or impure. I will therefore 
draw from this picture the ideas that cluster about it, 
and are suggested by it. The very first idea suggested 
by a city is that of permanency. At present we dwell in 
tents. The noblest edifice in London is but a transient 
tent ; all its gilding must fade, all its magnificence must 
depart, and the ploughshare pass over its ruins ; and if 
spared to the last day it must crumble and be calcined by 
the action of the last fire. The cities of this dispensation 
have been sacked by conquerors, or deserted by their 
people, or gulped down by earthquakes, or decimated by 
plague, and pestilence, and decay. But here we are 
taught to look for a city that no conqueror can sack ; 
over which no pestilence may shake its wings ; which no 
earthquake shall destroy, which no time can wear down ; 
whose streets shall be beaten by no weary feet ; whose in- 
habitants, countless as the sands, shall, have no breaking 
hearts ; whose air shall be torn by no storms ; and into 
whose magnificent and holy dwelling-places no sin, or 
death, or disease, or decay, shall ever be allowed to pene- 
trate. We have therefore the idea of perpetuity or of 
permanency suggested by the city. And the second idea 
perhaps suggested is that of immunity or safety. You 
remember the story of the city of refuge ; a type of 
what Christ was to be — the instant that the guilty homi- 
cide got within its walls, that instant he was safe from 



THE APOCALYPTIC CITY. 



253 



the pursuing avenger. So the instant that the sinner has 
fled to Christ, he is safe from the curse and the condem- 
nation of sin. And so this city may suggest the thought 
of perfect immunity ; that is, no danger shall enter it, no 
enemy shall touch it ; no secret poison in the air, or in 
the waters, or in its bread, shall be there ; no storm shall 
strike it, nothing can injure them ; for there shall be no 
tears, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor death. And there 
shall be no misapprehension nor mistake : " there shall 
be no night there/' And one beautiful thought, when 
first looked at apparently a sad one, but on consideration 
a sublime one : "I saw no temple therein." Now earth 
is the temple of God ; then God will be the temple of the 
earth. " I saw no temple therein," means no division, 
no distinction, no denominational features ; the whole 
earth encaustic tile, the whole surface tessellated pave- 
ment — not tile, not tessellated pavement; but the ruby, 
and the chalcedony, and the sapphire, and the topaz, and 
the diamond, and the amethyst ; and all space holy, and 
all hours canonical ; Christ the high altar ; its roof the 
majesty of the Eternal ; it3 worshippers a mighty multi- 
tude redeemed out of every kindred, and every people, 
and every tongue, that no man can number. 

But I pass on to a third thought suggested by a city, - 
namely, that of society. There is in the Creed a clause, 
a suggestive clause, " the communion of saints." The 
future is to be a social place. This city is not to consist 
of tiers of cells, cold, insulated, disconnected with each 
other, like the cells of prisoners undergoing solitary con- 
finement. What a miserable idea of heaven that would 
be ! it would be enough to make people ^shrink from the 
hope of it, and to disregard the belief of it as comfort. 



254 



THE GBEAT CONSUMMATION. 



In this future city, there are no monks, nor nuns, nor an- 
chorites, but the chiefestof sinners that washed their robes 
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. The 
song that is sung there is not a poor thin solo ; it will be 
the harmony of ten thousand times ten thousand voices, 
like the noise of many waters, saying : " Hallelujah, the 
Lord God omnipotent reigneth." "Ye are come./' says 
the apostle, ' ' to the general assembly of the church of the 
first born." But then, there will be no division. In the 
10th chapter of the Gospel of St. John, our Lord says: 
" Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold ," A\)lr\ j 
"them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; 
and there shall be one " — it is in our translation, unhap- 
pily, "fold; " but in the last line of the verse, it is not 
Avlrj but noiuvt] which means " a flock ; " so that the idea 
conveyed is that there will then be what we believe will 
be, all sheep pens, no more with demarcations and divi- 
sions, but lost in the universal flock ; all congregations 
constituting one church, all houses constituting one city — 
the communion of saints, the company of all that believe 
in the Lord Jesus Christ. 

The idea of a city suggests to us the thought of re- 
union ; and that is a very sweet and a precious thought. 
The countenances we loved have changed ; ties that were 
nearest and dearest have been dissolved ; and voices that 
rung as sweet chimes in our ears, if to the ear of no one 
else, are hushed till the roll of the last trump. But all 
the wounds of death shall one day be completely effaced ; 
all the spoils of -the grave shall become the trophies of 
the" Lord Jesus Christ ; all blanks in your broken circles 
shall be filled up ; all blots on your memories shall be ob- 
literated. At present we see with sadness the sundering 



THE APOCALYPTIC CITY. 



255 



of family bonds, the cancelling of the dear realities of 
home, and the diminishing of the orb of affection into a 
warning crescent, a wasting shadow. All this is by reason 
of sin, and sin alone ; but all shall be reversed ; and the 
lights that were quenched by your hearth shall be rekin- 
dled, and burn and shine with a splendor that shall have 
no shadow and with a glory that shall have no end. 

The next thought suggested by the idea of a city is that 
of unity. Here there are not only distinctions, but there 
are differences. There are not only distinctions, which 
beautify the church, and the family, but there are differ- 
ences that disturb the church and sometimes rend the fam- 
ily. On that day, in that city, these will all be res.olved ; 
and though we shall not be the fac-si miles of each other — 
I can conceive nothing more monotonous than for two peo- 
ple intimately and closely associated who exactly think the 
same things, and speak in the same way, and rarely differ, 
or look at things from a different stand-point and in a dif- 
ferent light — there may be all the perfection of unity 
with nothing of the deformity of unison. But what is the 
highest unity ? Each developing his own part, and yet 
harmony resulting from the whole. Abraham, from the 
land of Ur of the Chaldees, will be there ; Job, from his 
eastern plains, will be there; John from his Patmos, and 
Peter from his martyr's grave will be there ; Luther, 
whose dead dust sleeps in the church of Wittenberg, will 
be there ; and Ridley and Latimer, who cheered each 
other at the stake ; the one saying to the other, what was 
prophecy and not fancy, "Be of good cheer, brother Kid- 
ley, for we shall this day by God's grace light such a can- 
dle in England as shall never be put out; " and Knox, 
who feared not the face of clay, and spake to princes as he 



256 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



spake to the meanest of the people — all these we shall 
meet in that city that hath foundations. The babes of 
Bethlehem — Rachel no more weeping because they arc 
not, but thanking God because they are — and the last- 
gathered flowers of our day, shall all be there. Patri- 
archs, apostles, and saints, and prophets, shall be there ; 
all who have carried the world's burden on their souls, and 
received its scars upon their hearts; all who have worked 
for its highest interest and died for its greatest good, shall 
be there, fellow-citizens with the saints, and heirs of the 
kingdom of God. And methinks Adam and Eve — and 
this is not a fancy, but sober fact — will tell us the story 
of their fall ; and Abraham will rehearse the story of his 
wanderings; and Job will give us the autobiography of 
his life upon those eastern plains ; and Peter and Paul, 
and all whose names have become sacred but household 
words, I shall meet as sure as there is a God in heaven, 
and we shall talk long and sweetly together. And what 
a happy reunion, what a blessed fellowship, what an inter- 
esting intercourse will be that, when all is transparent, 
and all imperfections are gone, and we shall know as we 
are known, and love as we are loved, and that for ever and 
for ever ! 

The next idea suggested by a city is not only union or 
unity, but catholicity ; that is to say, there shall be but 
one church, and no distinction. I need not remark that 
the names by which churches are distinguished upon earth 
are all human ; the Episcopal church is not in the Bible, 
nor is the Presbyterian church, nor is the Congregational 
church. Pastors and people are in the Bible ; all else is 
conventional and for convenience. But here I have met 
with people so bigoted that they positively believe that 



THE APOCALYPTIC CITY. 



257 



there is no worship where there is no liturgy ; and among 
my own countrymen people just as bigoted, who think 
that with a Prayer-book and an organ it is a pure impos- 
sibility to offer anything like worship. I believe as spir- 
itual prayers as ever rose from earth to heaven have risen 
by the help of the Church of England Prayer-book ; and 
I believe that many formal, dead, dull, cold and freezing 
prayers have been uttered by parish ministers in Scotland. 
_ It is not the form nor the absence of form ; it is life in the 
heart ; it is the praying heart, not the bowing knee ; it is 
the earnest cry, not the words in which the cry is clothed ; 
and perhaps the most fervent prayers that ever rose to 
heaven were never expressed by human words. There are 
yearnings in many a soul that he himself does not knov^. 
the origin of — that he cannot embody in words ; and these 
yearnings, inspired by God, rise to heaven, and bring down 
answers exceedingly abundant above all that we can ask 
or think. And what are these answers ? Angel messen- 
gers from heaven, neither few nor far between, to let us 
know what is in our father's house ; bits of its better 
bread, to let us taste what his bounty hath provided for us 
there ; cupsful of its living streams from its living foun- 
tains to refresh us in this weary world of ours. I marvel 
to myself that people do not long more to have missives 
and intimations from heaven, visitants from above. I was 
reading the other day that on the shores of the Adriatic 
Sea the wives of fishermen, whose husbands have gone far 
off upon the deep, are in the habit at eventide of going 
down to the sea-shore, and singing, as female voices only 
can, the first stanza of a beautiful hymn ; after they have 
sung it they listen, till they hear borne by the wind across 
the desert sea the second stanza, sung by their gallant 



258 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



husbands as they are tossed by the gale upon the waves, 
and both are happy. Perhaps if we could listen we too 
might hear on this desert world of ours some sound, some 
whisper borne from afar, to remind us that there is a heav- 
en and a home ; and when we sing the hymn upon the 
shores of earth, perhaps we shall hear its sweet echo break- 
ing in music upon the sands of time, and cheering the 
hearts of them that are pilgrims and strangers, and look 
for a city that hath foundations. It is the din and the 
noise of this world that keep us from hearing the harmony 
and the sound of a better and a brighter world. And it 
is in trying to make these sounds audible that I reproduce 
these beautiful sketches in God's most blessed and cheer- 
ing book. In the day time you may walk up and down 
the Strand, or you may drive down Piccadilly, and still 
you do not hear the sound of the Westminster clock. 
But when the wind blows across your house in the deep si- 
lence of the night, you can hear its chief bell, with its 
deep muffled boom. Why do we hear it at night ? Be- 
cause the roar, and the din, and the tumult of this great 
city of ours is hushed. What is the reason that we do 
not distinctly hear the chimes of heaven ; that we rarely 
hear the music of the skies ? We do not listen. We are 
so enamored of the noise and the roar of this world that 
we cannot hear the harmony and the chimes of the better 
world. The din and noise of London keeps us from hear- 
ing the Westminister bell, and the din and noise of the 
world keep us from hearing the chimes of heaven ; while 
some people, as in Manchester, have cotton in their ears, 
which keeps out as effectually the sweet sound that would 
otherwise be music to their hearts. If we could hush the 
din, and the noise, and the absorbing tumult of this world, 



THE APOCALYPTIC CITY. 



259 



we too should hear something of that better land from 
the belfries of that great city that hath foundations. It 
is called the city of the Great King ; the new Jerusalem ; 
it is said to have the glory of God. That word translat- 
ed from the Hebrew would be the translation of the word 
shechinah. There was a glory shone on the mount, in the 
burning bush ; there was the glory that shone in the pil- 
lar of fire by night in the desert ; and that same glory, 
which was the glory of God, rested between the cherubim 
on the mercy-seat in the temple. Now this city is said 
to have the glory of God ; when that living glory shall be 
reflected from the blue sapphire, from the green emerald, 
from the dark-red sardonyx, from the deep-red jacinth, 
from the violet amethyst, from the pale topaz, and from 
the flashing diamond ; no longer in fragments, but in 
quarried rocks high as cathedrals, massive as the Pyr- 
amids, what a flood of splendor will pour from that bright 
city whose foundations are these precious stones ! how 
justly may we expect it has no need of the sun, nor of 
the moon, nor of the stars ! because all the light that they 
yield will be paled beside the intensity of that brighter 
light that never shall be extinguished, that glory that shall 
never die. 

Are we citizens of that city ? If we are, let us re- 
joice that our heritage is sure, that our destiny is certain. 



260 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



LECTURE XVI. 

THE CITIZENS OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 

We instinctively turn from the glorious outlines of " the 
city " to the character and condition of its living inmates, 
whose citizenship is there. 

" And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God 
out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." — Rev- 
elation xxi. 2. 

I endeavored in the course of my previous lecture to 
show that the new heavens and the new earth do not mean 
another physical economy substituted for the economy 
that now is, but that their restoration is to the earth and 
the heavens just what the resurrection is to the human 
body — the regenesis.. the renewal of all that has gone 
wrong, and the purification of all that has been tainted 
by sin, imperfection, and death. I hav3 tried to show 
what is meant by this splendid vision that descends from 
the heaven and settles on the earth in a form that cannot 
fail and with a glory that cannot die, characterized by a 
beauty that no inspired pen is able to delineate : " the 
new Jerusalem," " the city that hath foundations, whose 
builder and whose maker is God." I noticed in the 
course of my remarks the singular fact that from Genesis 



THE CITIZENS OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 261 

to Revelation — that is, for a perio'd of upwards of 4100 
years — Christians, whether of the dawn, or of the sun- 
rise, or of the noon, always anticipated some satisfaction 
upon earth in the shape of "a city." Abraham looked 
for a city — a city that hath foundations ; and it is said 
of God: "He hath prepared for them a city." And 
here we have the prediction and the promise translated 
into fact ; and the vision of the Apocalypse sure to be the 
realization of the future ; a city descending upon the earth 
that hath foundations — new Jerusalem, the vision of 
peace ; all splendor, beauty, magnificence and glory ; rich- 
er and more beautiful than a bride prepared for her hus- 
band ; never more to wane with years, or to waste by 
trouble, or to cease to be the central metropolis of the 
universe ; what Jerusalem was in type she is to be in real- 
ity, the beauty and the joy of the whole earth. 

I will refer in this lecture to the inhabitants of this 
city, or the citizens that shall be in it. I dare not pro- 
nounce who shall not be in it ; but I can pronounce with 
all the certainty of an oracle who shall be its citizens. 
Exclusion is the awful prerogative of Deity ; recognition 
of excellence is the joy, the happiness, and the delight of 
a Christian. Who shall never be there it is not for us to 
say ; who shall be there God has written in his own in- 
spired and blessed record. Let me then begin at the be- 
ginning, and trace the bright and shining footsteps upon 
the sands of time of those who have left this world, and 
are now in hope or in reversion citizens of that heavenly 
city. Adam and Eve, the father and the mother of us 
all, created in innocence by nature ; fallen by sin, re- 
deemed by sovereign grace and infinite love — these twain 
look back ; and even in heaven, one would suppose, they 



262 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



must be humbled when they think that the}' are the first 
links of a long chain of sorrowing and suffering men ; and 
yet they must rejoice and be thankful when they recollect 
that if they introduced sin, and with sin death, the Second 
Adam introduced almost cotemporaneously righteousness, 
and with righteousness life ; and that all that believe in the 
Second Adam, however involved in the calamities of the 
first, shall never taste the bitterness of the second death, 
but shall be citizens of no mean city, the heirs of the vis- 
ion of peace, and of that heritage that remains for all the 
people of God. We are sure that Adam and Eve are 
there ; they were the first Christians upon earth. It is a 
mistake to suppose that Christianity began 1800 years 
ago ; it began nearly 6000 years ago ; it was preached 
amid the wrecks of Eden ; it was sealed amidst the suf- 
ferings of Gethsemane ; it shall be enjoyed throughout the 
ages of eternity to come ; and Adam and Eve, the first, 
shall see and mingle with the last Christian company upon 
earth, and be citizens of that city that cometh down from 
heaven. 

Let me turn to the second link in the same grand chain. 
Abel is there. Abel was the second Christian, but he was 
the first martyr upon earth. I have often thought that it 
was just the distinctive truth of atoning and meritorious 
sacrifice that distinguished Abel's creed from the creed of 
Cain. I have no doubt if one had been called upon to 
say, being cotemporaneous with these brothers, which was 
the most lovely and the most beautiful offering ; if we had 
no light from the Bible we should at once have said Cain's. 
Both recognised the duty and the privilege of worship ; 
both came and offered what they believed to be the expres- 
sion of their adoration to the living and the true God. 



THE CITIZENS OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 263 

Wherein lay the difference ? When Cain came in that 
first morning the clouds of which had scarcely begun to 
gather, and the light of which had scarcely yet begun to 
grow dim, he selected the loveliest flowers that grew under 
the shadow of the walls of Paradise ; flowers that still 
retained something of the lingering perfume and unextin- 
guished loveliness of Eden before sin blighted all — he 
bound these flowers into a beautiful bouquet ; he laid it on 
the altar of his Creator and his God ; and if one might 
interpret the feelings of Cain by language which must 
express substantially what was his real feeling, he must 
have prayed to God in some such way as this : Thou 
who art the Creator of heaven and of earth, thou madest 
all things, and all things bear the impress of thy majesty, 
thy goodness, and thy power ; these flowers I have gather- 
ed from the earth thou madest ; thy smiles gave to every 
flower its exquisite tints ; thy breat'h, blessed Lord, gave 
to the rose and the violet their unrivalled perfume ; I have 
gathered them on thy earth ; and I dedicate, and devote, 
and offer them to thee ; recognizing thee as the Creator, 
and the Governor, and the Ruler of all for ever and ever. 
Amen. What was the result? The flame from heaven 
blasted the offering, and Cain retired a rejected offerer 
from the presence of God. But when Abel brought his 
offering, what did he do ? Abel selected, now, what d 
priori or on first impressions would be most unacceptable ; 
he brought an innocent lamb from the midst of his flock ; 
he plunged the knife in its throat — a repulsive and pain- 
ful act ; he shed its blood and poured it out before the 
altar, on which he laid the victim, where it was consumed 
to ashes ; and as the smoke rose in curling waves upward 
to the skies, he prayed in some such style as this : Bless- 



264 



THE GHEAT CONSUMMATION. 



ed Lord, along with my brother Cain I own thee as Crea- 
tor, I adore thee as preserver ; but I go further than my 
brother Cain ; I feel that I have sinned, that I have lost 
thine image ; that I am guilty before thee ; and I know 
that without shedding of blood there is no remission ; and 
I believe that only through the shedding of the blood of 
that Lamb slain from the foundation of the world can I 
have pardon and peace. Therefore, blessed Lord, I shed 
the blood of this lamb in token that I ought to die ; but I 
offer this lamb as a sacrifice in prefiguration of the sacri- 
fice of which thou didst tell my broken-hearted father and 
sorrowing mother in the midst of Paradise, the woman's 
seed that should bruise the serpent's head ; and I ask thee 
to pity me and to pardon me, and if it please thee my 
brother Cain, as thou hast pardoned my father and my 
mother, through that precious blood which alone cleanseth 
from all sin. Abel's sacrifice rose to heaven like the 
ascending incense and perfume of an accepted heart ; and 
Abel retired, a Christian worshipper of God and of the 
Lamb. Here then we have the two first public worship- 
pers upon earth : Abel, the ancient martyr ; Cain, the 
deceived and deluded worshipper. Cain I pass by in 
silence ; Abel I am sure is a citizen of the new J erusa- 
lem ; an heir of that house not made with hands, which 
God himself hath provided. We come down the lapse of 
the ages, and we arrive at another illustrious citizen — 
Noah. And there is something interesting in mentioning 
and enumerating the citizens of that city. If you wish to 
see the beautiful catalogue, called by an ancient Christian 
the roll-call of the illustrious dead, read the 11th chapter 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews ; where each name is that 
of one that faithfully fought the good fight, and nobly and 



THE CITIZENS OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 265 

heroically fell. It is -written in the annals of the French 
natir-n that a great soldier, the leader of her armies, fell 
in battle ; but so revered was his name, so illustrious his 
deeds, that when the regimental roll was called his name 
was always called among the rest ; and while each soldier 
answered to his name, there was a momentary silence when 
this name was called, till one answered for him : ' : Fallen 
upon the field of battle." In the 11th chapter of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews we read of those that fell upon the 
field of battle ; and inspiration answers for them that they 
were worthy of* the cause and glorified the name that they 
sustained ; that name which is above every name — the 
name of Christ. The third is Noah, a preacher, we are 
told, of righteousness ; warning the people of that day of 
the approaching Flood ; but, like all that speak from the 
prophetic record, despised, scoffed at, and derided, and wait- 
ing patiently for the hour when what he predicted should be 
fulfilled, and the Flood should cleanse an earth by its bap- 
tism that would not be reformed or purified by the teach- 
ing of Noah. He too is a citizen. Then we come to the 
great father of the faithful, who is said in the Epistle to 
the Hebrews to have " looked for a city ; " stained by sin, 
branded on one occasion by equivocation, and yet in spite 
of all and surmounting all an heir of the righteousness 
which is by faith, and father of all the faithful. Then we 
come to Lot, in the midst of a wicked city, placed there 
not by God's providence, but by his own choice. If you 
are assigned a situation in the providence of God, there 
the same grace that placed you will strengthen and sustain 
you if you seek it. But if you go into a wicked place 
where Providence does not call you, you may be sustained 
— God forbid that I should limit his grace ; but you have 
12 



266 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



no reason to expect that it will be so. Lot went into a 
place not because it was the path of duty, but because he 
said it was "well watered," and there were plenty of 
flocks; and the din of its mills and the noise of its machine- 
ry were most pleasing, and suggestive of large per centage 
and of great and speedy returns ; therefore he fixed upon 
Sodom as his dwelling-place ; and from the day he did so 
till the day he fled, he " vexed his righteous soul with the 
filthy conversation " of those that were about him. And 
yet Lot. snatched by grace from the flame as a brand from 
the burning, is a citizen of the new J erusalem. Another 
is David, the son of Jesse, the sweet singer of Israel. He 
was stained by a great crime, having become most guilty 
before God ; but his guilt is not a precedent for us, but a 
beacon for all to avoid. If you can guarantee that ^th 
David's sin you shall also shed David's tears, and feel 
David's broken heart and David's deep penitence, then with 
David you may also sin ; but as you have no such guaran- 
tee, you are to refer to his story, first, as a proof what 
great sin the greater mercy of our God may cover ; 
secondly, as a proof that there is no perfect character upon 
earth till we come to Christ, the Prince of Peace ; and 
third, as a beacon which you are to avoid, and to which 
you are to give a long and a large berth. Because David 
escaped there is not in that the necessary evidence that 
those who imitate his sin shall escape and not suffer ship- 
wreck. Isaiah sees his splendid prophecies fulfilled, his 
glorious predictions all realized, and the light that lightens 
the Gentiles, the glory of his people Israel. There Jere- 
miah weeps no more over the sins and sorrows of a doom- 
ed and a guilty capital. Ezekiel beholds the temple the 
outlines of which he sketched, and he is satisfied. There 



THE CITIZENS OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 267 

Malachi sees that Sun rise that he predicted to arrive with 
healing under his wings, and rejoices in Him who is the 
light that lightens the Gentiles and the glory of his peo- 
ple Israel. 

If we come down to New Testament history we shall 
find other citizens of the same city. The evangelists, 
who wrote the words and portrayed the likeness of the 
Prince of Peace in his own light, are there. John sees 
realized the most splendid visions of the Apocalypse, and 
knows by happy experience that what the world calls the 
dreams of the visionary were the true and faithful 
records of the city of the living God. Paul, who perse- 
cuted the Christians and was forgiven ; who was struck 
down by a splendor that was love as much as it was 
light ; not worthy to be called an apostle, the least of 
saints, the chiefest of sinners, is now a citizen of no mean 
city. Peter too, who denied his Lord, and was so afraid 
of a maid servant's reproach that with an oath three 
times he declared he did not know him, is now not 
denied by him, but forgiven and made welcome to that 
city that hath foundations. The prodigal too has entered 
into the city, and there is no ill-natured, envious, bitter 
elder brother to grudge the reception of the dead made 
alive, and the welcome of the prodigal and the stranger 
brought home. There too is the publican, that stood afar 
off ; no longer standing afar off, but introduced into the 
midst of the white-robed group in the presence of God 
and of the Lamb, and worshipping and serving him per- 
petually. There too is Mary, who finds in heaven what 
she believed on earth, that one thing was supremely 
needful. There too is Martha, who thought here that to 
be troubled about many things was her duty, and learns 



268 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



now that Mary her sister had chosen that better part. 
There too is Stephen, the protomartyr, who died looking 
to Jesus, and beholding the glory that was around his 
throne. There too is Mary Magdalene, that washed his 
feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her 
head, a worshipper before the throne. What a group is 
that ! a group composed not of unfallen men, not of 
perfect saints, but of great sinners, the chiefest of sinners, 
the least of saints, some of them the worst of mankind ; 
that it may be seen by you, and taken home to your poor 
desponding, and dejected hearts as an encouragement to 
believe that for you there is pardon through precious 
blood, for you there is acceptance in Christ's righteous- 
ness ; for you there is a perfect title to eternal joy. 

If I leave the era of Scripture, and go down to those 
who succeed it, we shall find in that city Justin Martyr, 
who conversed with John ; who wrote the most splendid 
defence of Christianity, addressed to Trypho the Jew; 
and who has now entered into rest. There too we shall 
find Polycarp, who, when cast to the wild beasts, and told 
that he might save his life if he would deny Christ, 
replied in beautiful and memorable words : " For eighty- 
six years I have served him, and he has never done me 
wrong; why should I deny him now?" There too is 
Augustine, the most illustrious of all the evangelical 
writers of that era; who preached what is called Calvin- 
ism, now in contempt, but what he found to be living 
Christianity then. And there too is the Archbishop of 
Constantinople, with M the golden mouth ; " whose ora- 
tions live and are admired and loved by all that love 
precious truth, and rejoice that it is fully and faithfully 
preached. And there too is Jerome, the living proof 



THE CITIZENS OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 



269 



upon earth that asceticism was not piety ; and there too is 
Vigilantius his opponent, who forgives the sins of Jerome, 
and forgets the temper that he showed ; because both 
held fast the foundation, Christ and him crucified. And 
if we come to later days, when the sky of Christendom 
was obscured by one dark cloud that rose from the 
swamps of Roman and mediaeval superstition, we shall sec 
stars in that sky that rose invisible then, but that now 
shine and set no more. First the illustrious Alcuin, who 
preached the Gospel when the Gospel had almost become 
a memory of the past ; Claude of Turin, one of the most 
devoted and illustrious pastors of an era which possessed 
extremely few that were faithful ; and Henri, another of 
the same period, faithful unto death, called the great 
Protestant of the middle ages ; and Peter Waldo, from 
whose name the Waldenses were called, the shelter and 
protection of whom by Victor Emanuel and his prede- 
cessors for many years is I believe one of the secrets of 
his prosperity, his success, and the blessings that resb 
upon his kingdom, and the hopes he cherishes — hopes 
that God grant may be realized — that Rome will be his 
capital, and a united Italy his people and his kingdom. 
When we come down from the middle ages to later times 
we shall find WicklifFe, the morning star, as he was called, 
of the Reformation in England, and who translated the 
Bible into our noble Saxon mother-tongue ; who died at 
Lutterworth — a church tower I never pass upon the 
railway without thinking of his name and blessing his 
memory. His dead dust was exhumed from the grave, 
cast into the river Avon by the bigoted, and superstitious, 
and proscriptive priesthood ; but in the words of one of 
our own poets — 



270 



THE GKEAT CONSUMMATION. 



" The Avon to the Severn runs, 
The Severn to the sea; 
And Wickliffe's dust has spread abroad, 
Wide as the waters be." 

They could not extinguish the truths he taught, though 
they could cast into the river the dust or rather the man- 
tle he had left behind him. After him arose that great, 
brave, trumpet-tongued speaker of the era of the Re- 
formation, the illustrious Martin Luther ; whose sermons 
were described as cannon-balls ; who spoke a great truth, 
and its echoes came back in crashes from the Vatican ; 
whose memory will live in the hearts of those that know 
the truth and in the memories of those that revere the 
great, the good, the faithful, and the true. And his dead 
dust rests beneath the roof of the church of Wittenburg, 
in the hope, the certain hope of the resurrection, and his 
spirit now dwells in heaven, getting ready to enter that 
city that hath foundations ; and soul and body shall be re- 
united, and dwell together in that city that cometh down 
from heaven, adorned as a bride adorned for her husband. 
And along with Martin Luther I must speak of one 
scarcely less illustrious than he, the amiable, the learned, 
the accomplished Melancthon ; his name was originally 
Blackyird, but afterwards turned into the more euphonious 
name Melancthon, which- is the Greek for the same thing. 
He was learned, amiable, gentle ; and whenever Luther's 
temper was ruffled by his difficulties, a gentle word from 
Melancthon laid it ; and when Luther's arsenal of argu- 
ments was exhausted, the profound learning of Melanc- 
thon supplied a new fact, or a new reason, or a more con- 
clusive proof; and Luther used to refer back to " his dear 
Philip " as his tutor, his instructor, and the back-ground 



THE CITIZENS OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 271 



on which he could retire when anything on the part of his 
enemies seemed more than he could endure. After this 
we come to Ridley, burnt at the stake ; and with Ridley 
the illustrious Latimer ; the one, as the flames seized 
upon their limbs, comforting the other with the glorious 
words that ought to ring in the heart of every Protestant 
inextinguishable forever : " Be of good cheer, dear broth- 
er ; for we shall this day light such a candle in England 
as by God's grace never shall be put out." And after 
this the faithful Cranmer, who faltered for an hour, recov- 
ered the ground he had lost, and when tied to the stake 
thrust the hand that signed his recantation into the flames, 
blessed God for the grace that had kept him firm, and de- 
plored the hour when for one moment his faith faltered 
and his love grew cold. Nor can I omit Knox, who never 
feared the face of clay ; £< whose sermon," said Scotland's 
Queen, "I dread more than the long bows of England." 
Every Englishman in those days who carried twelve arrows 
said he carried twelve Scotchmen's lives at his belt ; and 
the long bows of England were the terror of the Scotch, 
just as the claymores of the Scotch were often the terror 
of the English. Knox, a man very much misrepresented, 
was by birth a gentleman, by education a scholar ; but he 
lived in a rough and tempestuous age ; and if he had not 
spoken strong words and said fearless things, he would have 
been no more felt than the zephyr is felt against the sails 
of the ship ; his memory would have perished, and the 
good he accomplished never would have been done. And 
along with Knox there was one not less illustrious, An- 
drew Melville, one of the most amiable, gentle, and beau- 
tiful spirits that adorned an era of turmoil, of controver- 
sy, and of conflict. But while people blame the severity 



272 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



of Knox — and we admit he said very severe things — 
yet notwithstanding, it is fact that in England the rooks' 
nests were left, to use Knox's phrase, and the rooks have 
come back in flocks ; but in Scotland not a nest was left 
that was not pulled down, and the rooks have not come 
back there. It is not true that Knox destroyed the cathe- 
drals ; he said of all the cathedrals, What superstition 
has desecrated, the faithful preaching of God's holy word 
consecrates ; but the monasteries he did pull down, and he 
did well in pulling them down ; and all the retreats of a 
superstitious, debased and immoral priesthood he swept 
away ; and however aesthetic taste may mourn over the 
ruin of what was architecturally beautiful, Christian hearts 
must rejoice that the foul nests were destroyed, and that 
the rooks have never had an attraction strong enough to 
bring them from Rome to the grey moors, and the shaggy 
rocks, and the brown heath of Scotland. 

If we come further down in the history of the world, 
to more recent times, we shall find other citizens no less 
illustrious. Let me mention among the first of these in 
France the illustrious and the evangelical Quesnel. Clem- 
ent XI. fulminated a Bull, a practice which the Popes in- 
dulge in to the present day, denouncing the truths taught 
by him in 101 propositions selected from his writings. 
One of these propositions should never be forgotten, be- 
cause though condemned by a Pope it will be recognized 
at the judgment-day. It was this : " The Church of 
Christ is the company of all Christians who are washed in 
the blood and who are trusting in the righteousness of 
Christ, who sleep in the bosom of the common father, and 
who are looking forward to the glory that is to be reveal- 
ed." Now of that beautiful truth, the very words of 



THE CITIZENS OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 273 

which are music, tope Clement XI. said : " This is here- 
sy, it smells of heresy, and is infected with heresy ; we 
order it to be expunged ; and we command the authorities 
to punish with the civil arms all that are guilty of acqui- 
escing in such heresy as this." With him appears the 
celebrated Pascal, whose thoughts will live as long as the 
language in which they are expressed, and whose severe 
sarcasms on the Jesuit3 were provoked by their conduct, 
and deserved by the wickedness by which they were brand- 
ed. But under the shadow of the Church of Rome we 
even find a few Christians. There are — never forget 
this — Papists in the Protestant Church ; there are Protes- 
tants in the Church of Rome. There are men in the Church 
of England who subscribe its Articles, in it, not of it; 
there are men in the Church of Rome who wear its or- 
ders, in it, but not of it. Who can doubt that Massillon, 
who made the hearts and the consciences of royalty quake, 
w is a Christian minister and a child of God ? Who can 
doubt that Fenelon, the beautiful writer of the most ex- 
quisite and instructive tale that ever was written, was a 
Christian ? They were men whose outer garments were 
singed by the fires of the apostacy ; but whose hearts, and 
consciences, and intellects remained pure and true. Who 
can doubt that Martin Boos, who lived and died a priest 
in the Church of Rome, was in spite of so equivocal a re- 
lation a true Christian ? And I have met myself in Paris, 
and even in England, priests and members of the Church 
of Rome, who show that, in spite of the enveloping super- 
stition, there is a power and a majesty in God's truth 
that penetrates the darkness, and touches and transforms 
hearts in spite of all the circumstances by which they are 
surrounded. Mungo Park, the celebrated traveller, when 



274 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



wandering amidst the burning sands of an African waste, 
just at the moment when his heart was failing and his 
flesh had fainted, and he had no hope of restoration or of 
seeing civilization again, noticed amidst the burning sands 
a solitary flower that peeped out fresh and beautiful as if 
it had been just transplanted from the dwelling-place of 
God. The traveller no sooner saw it than he said, If there 
be this flower in the desert, a God must have nursed it ; 
his dews must have refreshed it, his sweet sunshine must 
have warmed it ; and from seeing that solitary flower he 
took heart, and journeyed on, and reached the confines of 
civilization. In the same manner, in the Church of Rome, 
when we speak severely of the system we never mean to 
imply that there are no Christians there — God forbid ! 
J ust as that solitary flower in the desert would there show 
a God amidst the burning sands, so a Fenelon, a Massillon, 
a Martin Boos, and others, show that God's grace is to be 
found even in and in spite of the Church of Rome. I 
fear we forget very often how long grace may consist with 
and struggle against great error ; and how much piety 
may survive notwithstanding repressing and restricting 
circumstances around. I would not undervalue truth or 
praise error ; I would not undervalue our own privileges, 
or praise the position of the Church of Rome ; but it may 
be — whilst I believe and can demonstrate that that sys- 
tem is the apostacy ; whilst I believe and can prove that 
the head of that system is the Antichrist — that poor Pio 
Nono, old, weak, shivering, and descending rapidly to the 
grave, may have some ideas of true Christianity ; he may 
in his heart have a little love, in his conscience some light, 
in his intellect scintillations of the truth ; and the victim 
of grave and painful circumstances, he may — I dare not 



THE CITIZENS OE THE NEW JERUSALEM. 



275 



say more — in spite of all and in the midst of all find ac- 
cess to the kingdom of God. 

Now if I pass down to still later ages we shall find 
other citizens of the same city no less illustrious. There 
is the great Nonconformist Baxter. His picture of the 
Saints' Everlasting Rest has been the study of the 
peasant and the admiration of the scholar. With a pen 
dipped in the very love of heaven, and radiant with 
apocalyptic splendor, he has portrayed the beauty a,nd 
blessedness of that rest that remaineth for the people of 
God. And after him, who can omit to mention the name 
of Bunyan, the prisoner of Bedford gaol, the writer of a 
work that ranks with Homer in genius, with Milton's 
Paradise Lost in epic grandeur ; the study of England's 
firesides ; written in the homeliest and the tersest words, 
pregnant with the fire of heaven, and burning with 
celestial and undying light — his Pilgrim's Progress? 
How beautifully does he describe the close of time when 
he says: " By this time the pilgrims were got over the 
enchanted ground, and entering into the country of 
Beulah ; whose air was very sweet and pleasant, the way 
lying directly through it, they solaced themselves there 
for a season. Yea, here they heard continually the sing- 
ing of birds, and saw every day the flowers appear in the 
earth, and heard the voice of the turtle in the land. In 
this country the sun shineth night and day ; wherefore this 
was beyond the valley of the shadow of death, and also 
out of the reach of Giant Despair, neither could they 
from this place so much as see Doubting Castle." How 
suggestive is that, how beautiful ! neither could they 
from this happy place so much as see what is now the 
coldest shadow that lies upon our spirits, the shadow of 



276 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



Doubting Castle. "Here they were within sight of the 
city they were going to, also here met them some of the 
inhabitants thereof ; for in this land the shining ones 
commonly walked, because it was upon the borders of 
heaven. Now as they walked in this land they had more 
rejoicing than in parts more remote from the kingdom to 
which they were bound ; and drawing near to the city 
they had yet a more perfect view thereof. It was builded 
of pearls and precious stones, also the street thereof was 
paved with gold ; so that by reason of the natural glory 
of the city, and the reflection of the sunbeams upon it, 
Christian with desire fell sick : Hopeful also had a fit or 
two of the same disease." Such then was Bunyan, the 
writer of that epic which shall never be forgotten where 
the English language is understood. 

Another citizen was the celebrated Archbishop Leigh- 
ton, who fled to one party to avoid the bitterness of the 
other, and learned that in no party or section of the 
visible church could that peace be realized which was to 
be tasted only in the city that cometh down from heaven. 
After him let me mention Andrew Fuller, the illustrious 
Baptist, one of the most able and vigorous, though now 
very much forgotten writers of a former epoch • and 
Robert Hall, the most exquisite writer of the English 
tongue that ever lived ; for the style of Addison, and of 
Johnson, and even the vigorous style of modern days, is 
surpassed by the classic beauty, the unrivalled rhythm, 
the rich thought, the poetic splendor of Robert Hall; 
charged and enriched, as all he writes is, with the evan- 
gelical and vital truths of the Gospel of Christ. Then 
after him was the illustrious Elliot, the apostle of the 
Indians, and Oberlin and Felix NefF, the evangelists of 



THE CITIZENS OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 



277 



the Alps ; Wesley, the founder of a body that has done 
enormous good amidst the lowest strata of city populations ; 
and Whitfield, whose eloquence shook the age in which he 
lived. I might come down to more recent names, such 
as those of Chalmers and others, who have passed away 
and entered into rest, and have joined the general com- 
pany of the first born, the innumerable company of saints, 
the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God, and 
have gone to Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, 
and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just 
men made perfect. And to these we would add infants 
who have passed into heaven, forgiven the martyrdom of 
the passage ; flowers laid upon their breasts as they are 
- committed to the dust, and spared the thorns that would 
otherwise have penetrated their hearts had they been left 
amid the living here ; infants taken from our cold laps, 
and dropped into the lap of God, and made happy and 
blessed for ever ; the most favored, the least forgotten of 
human kind. And sainted men, whose names are sounded 
by no trumpet, but whose deeds have been approved of 
God ; and happy ones who have entered into rest, whose 
works do follow them, citizens of no mean city. What a 
glorious group will be there ! what a bright assemblage 
will that be ! Oh may God grant that we too may be 
numbered with those saints in glory everlasting ! 

But however distinguished these citizens may be, they 
have certain points in common. First, they have washed 
their robes in the same precious blood ; all are clothed 
with the same perfect righteousness ; all have entered in- 
to heaven, and are the "heirs of the kingdom of God, not 
because of anything in them, nor anything done by them, 
nor anything deserved by them ; but wholly and solely be- 



278 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



cause of Christ's righteousness imputed to them, and re- 
ceived by faith and by faith alone. All of them have 
been renewed, regenerated, and sanctified by the same 
Holy and Blessed Spirit ; all of them were sinners. 
What an evidence does the apostle give of this when he 
says that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of 
heaven ; neither idolaters, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor 
drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the 
kingdom of God ! But what does he add? " Such were 
some of you." You see who are admitted into heaven; 
they were once extortioners, covetous, drunkards, revilers, 
thieves: "such were some of you." Then why is it 
otherwise with them now ? " But ye are washed, but ye 
are sanctified, but ye are justified." And these citizens, 
in the next place, were not only sinners, but they were 
great sufferers ; they came out of great tribulation, there- 
fore they were in it. 

If Paul has reached an entrance to that city ; if David 
is an heir of that kingdom ; if these two shall be raised at 
the sound of the last trump, and shall shine in eternal 
beauty and unfading splendor as the citizens of that new 
Jerusalem, that city that hath foundations, why should 
you be excluded ? You have not sinned like David, you 
have not been guilty of murder like Paul, you have not 
fallen into open sin like the Magdalene ; then I ask, w 7 hy 
should you be excluded ? Your sin does not exclude you • 
it is your unwillingness to be saved, and that alone, that 
excludes you. I repeat what I have often said, that this 
very hour the gates of heaven are open ; all God asks you 
is to submit to let him save you in his way, and to lay aside 
your own notions of being saved in your own own way ; 
and if you will submit to let him save you, and cast your- 



THE CITIZENS OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. '279 



selves upon his care, and lay your heart's last throb, and 
your soul's best hope, and your spirit's only trust upon God 
the Father's love in Christ, the Son's sacrifice, then the 
Bible is a lie if you are not saved with an everlasting sal- 
vation. 



?80 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



LECTURE XVII. 

THE SHECHINAH. 

Each element in the condition of this city deepens in 
beauty and glory. That can be no common city to adorn 
which heaven and earth contribute their beauty and their 
resources. 

mt And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold, the 
tabernacle of God is -with men, and he will dwell with them, and they 
shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their 
God." — Revelation xxi. 3. 

The first question we should try to answer here is, what 
is the tabernacle of God ? What construction are we to 
put upon the prophecy that the tabernacle of God shall 
be with men? I think the best way to ascertain its 
meaning is to inquire what the tabernacle was, and in 
what sense that word was used. 

It was created whilst Israel was in the desert ; a 
movable and transitory tent made of goats' skins and 
rams' skins, and curtains of goats' hair, with purple orna- 
ments and veils, 100 cubits, or 150 feet long, and 50 
cubits, or 75 feet in breadth. This tabernacle was a 
purely transitory and migratory, not a permanent creation 
upon earth ; it was set up at Gilgal, at Shiloh ; it was 
consecrated by atoning blood, and sanctified by the glory 



THE SHBCHINAH. 



281 



that dwelt between the cherubim descending and settling 
upon it ; around it were pitched the tents of the Levites, 
who ministered continually within it ; and inside of it 
there was what the apostle enumerates in the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, where he is speaking of the good things, 
that is the typical things, that had passed away. He tells 
us of the sanctuary that God pitched, in Hebrews ix. 2 : 
" There was a tabernacle made ; the first, wherein was 
the candlestick, and the table, and the shewbread, which 
is called the sanctuary. And after the second veil, the 
tabernacle which is called the Holiest of all ; which had 
the golden censer, and the ark of the covenant over- 
laid round about with gold, wherein was the golden pot 
that had manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the 
tables of the covenant; and over it the cherubims of 
glory shadowing the mercy seat ; of which we cannot 
now speak particularly." We have thus an inventory 
drawn up by the pen of inspiration itself of the contents 
of the ancient tabernacle pitched in the desert. Thaft 
tabernacle gave place to the splendid temple of Solomon ; 
its furniture in all its integrity being transferred to that 
august and magnificent edifice ; that again, with the ex- 
ception of the ark, which was lost, passed into the second 
temple of Herod, into which came a glory brighter than 
that which dwelt between the cherubim, namely, Christ, 
the light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of his 
people Israel. Now the truth is, all these things had a 
direct evangelical significance ; they were not arbitrary 
pieces of furniture which had no meaning, but were in 
their way divine hieroglyphics, written over with mys- 
terious characters, which the eye of the uninstructed 
could not penetrate, but rich in prophetic significance of 



282 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



the glory that was to be revealed to every one whose eye 
was anointed with what the seer in the Apocalypse calls 
the eye-salve, or what John in his Epistle calls the 
unction of the Holy One, which teacheth all things. 

We notice among the very first and foremost of the 
ornaments or the furniture in this institution the ark. 
The ark was a box with a lid of gold ; inside of it were 
the tables of the law; over the lid of gold were two 
figures of men, representing angels with outstretched 
wings, the tips of their wings meeting over the mercy 
seat, and shining down upon its bright lid with intense 
glory, dark, in the words of Milton, with excess of light, 
and sleeping there like a perpetual sunshine, eclipsing the 
noonday splendor in the daytime, and lighting up the holy 
of holies with its undying lustre throughout the night 
time. This glory, as it was called, was a descent of a 
celestial splendor ; it was a portion of heaven's own light 
falling like a sunbeam upon a dark but favored spot in 
this dark world of ours ; and it was meant to give the 
Christians of that day an idea of that glory when it shall 
not be a handful of heaven's sunbeams resting in a taber- 
nacle or a temple, but when it shall irradiate and over- 
flow with its light the whole globe, and shall fill earth's 
darkest spots with a glory that shall put out the sun, and 
the moon, and the stars. As the sun now by day puts 
out the stars, so that glory will then put out the sun. 
This ark was the symbol, in the first place, of the 
Saviour. And by trying to show you w^hat this inven- 
tory of furniture means, without straining the application 
of a single article of it, we shall form the best idea of 
what is meant by the promise that the tabernacle of God 
shall be with men. It never can be construed that the 



THE SHECHINAH. 



283 



literal material structure of goats' hair, and rams' skins, 
and purple and vermillion, shall be reproduced upon this 
earth ; but it does seem truly to indicate that new Jeru- 
salem that cometh down from heaven, prepared like a 
bride adorned for the bridegroom ; in that city that lieth 
four-square, the foundations of which are not the coarse 
granite and sandstone, but all the precious stones of the 
earth, when these precious stones shall be found, not in 
tiny specks in the rings of those that wear them, but in 
massive rocks, the foundations of a fabric such as the sun 
never shone on, such as eye hath not certainly seen, nor 
ear heard, nor man's heart conceived, unless so far as it is 
revealed to us by the Holy Spirit of God ; — whilst I 
believe in the strict spiritual significance of this taber- 
nacle, yet if you will read at your leisure the 21st chap- 
ter of the Apocalypse, I think you will find it difficult to 
conclude that it is a mere figure of speech. To use 
architectural language, the specifications are laid down 
with such minuteness, the measurement, the details, and 
the structure, that one cannot but believe that something 
will appear on this earth answering to this exquisitely 
beautiful picture. I must repeat again what I have often 
said, there is nothing absurd in that. It is just as 
worthy of God to make a precious stone as it is to make* . 
a Christian ; it is as worthy of him to show matter in its 
highest and most brilliant development as it is to show 
moral nature in its highest and its noblest forms. It is a 
common, miserable notion among many, a notion that is 
the root of endless heresies, that there is something in 
matter that is impure and polluted : so far that is true ; 
but it was the devil that introdnced the pollution, it was 
not God ; and if it be true that God comes into our 



284 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



world not the Creator of things that were not, but the 
Restorer of things that were ; not the Maker of another 
world, but the Reformer and the Regenerator of a world 
that has gone wrong; why should one hesitate — especi- 
ally if we cannot explain these predictions according to 
any other principles — to believe that this earth will be a 
beautiful spot ; that its flowers will be such as this pres- 
ent earth cannot give birth to ? for there is no rose with- 
out a worm in its bud; there is no petal without an aphis 
or fly upon it to destroy it ; there is no precious stone 
that has not in it some flaw, or some defect. But then 
and there will be a world all beauty, all perfection : 
more splendid than that which perished at Adam's fall 
will be that srand structure which will be raised at 
Christ's sure and near return. 

To show the significance of the ancient tabernacle, and 
thus to reach some notion of what will be, I may mention 
that the ark is constantly represented as the type of our 
blessed Lord. In other words, when the Jew looked to 
that ark, he did typically and materially what you and I 
do spiritually and by faith when we look to Christ. When 
Daniel prayed, he turned his face, not, as certain architec- 
tual ecclesiastics or ecclesiastical architects of modern 
times say, to the east, but towards the mercy seat. 
Wherever the temple was, there the Jew turned his eye 
and his heart when he prayed. Why? Because he pray- 
ed then in the name of Jesus, just as you and I do. 
When we pray now w r e do not look east, or west, or north, 
or south, which have no virtue, but we look to Christ. 
Daniel looked to the ark, the mercy seat, and the glory 
between the cherubim ; we look to that which was typified 
and set forth therein, the Lord Jesus Christ. The notion 



THE SHE CHIN AH. 



285 



that a church to be fit for prayers being offered in it, or 
for those prayers to have any chance of being heard, must 
be pitched due east and west, is positively to detract from 
the mediatorial excellency of Christ, and to give that 
mediatorial virtue to the east and west. The attitude in 
which you pray is nothing ; whether you kneel, or stand, 
or sit, it is a question of decency, not a question of merit 
or of efficacy ; nor in what language you pray, Hebrew, 
Greek, Latin, or Gaelic ; that is a question merely of 
usage, of education, or of preference ; but that you shall 
pray looking to the ark, resting on the mercy seat, in the 
name of Christ, this is essential to constitute Christianity. 
Hence the Christianity of the ark and the Christianity of 
Christ differ in form, but they do not differ in essential 
nature and intrinsic character. Now on the lid of this 
box, which was called the ark, a totally different Hebrew 
word from the word applied to Noah's ark, denoting — I 
need not tell you, because a child knows it — a totally 
different thing ; on the lid of this box, which lid was made 
of the purest beaten gold, that is, gold that was finest, and 
purest, and strongest, lay sleeping, like the sweet sunshine 
in a bright summer day in a glen or in a crevice of the 
rock, a portion of heaven's own glory, along which upward 
to the skies the heart of the Israelite might look and see 
the glory that was one day to be revealed, and down which 
God could look and hear the cry and see the beating of 
the hearts of his humble and believing worshippers. This 
lid was made of pure gold, and the glory slept upon it, and 
it is to it that the apostle refers in Romans iii. 25, where 
he says : 4 ' Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation. " 
The Greek word in the 25th verse for ''propitiation" 
might be rendered "Whom God hath set forth to be a 



286 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



mercy seat," that is, to be the golden lid of the ark, with 
the glory shining upon it, for the forgiveness of sins. 
Hence the name given to the lid was 1 : the mercy seat ; ? ' 
and the idea conveyed by that word was that of atonement, 
propitiation, sacrifice. If therefore that ark typified — 
for that is all — Jesus Christ, it typified him in that 
divine aspect in which Is set forth his glory, when the 
apostle said, " I determined to know nothing among you 
save Jesus Christ, and him crucified; " that is — save the 
propitiatory, or the mercy seat, or the atonement. Within 
this box called the ark, under this golden lid, there was 
first of all the law, or the tables of the law. Is not that 
thought a very precious and a very instructive one ? The 
law no longer flashing in lightning from Mount Sinai ; no 
longer echoing in thunder-peals amid its cloven rocks ; no 
longer in a voice so awful that even the meek-hearted 
Moses quaked when he heard it ; but muffled, stayed, 
hushed, beneath the atoning blood, and the golden lid of 
the mercy seat and the glory, to show to us that the right- 
eousness of the law was fulfilled in Christ, and that we are 
to look not within the box, nor beneath the lid to the writ- 
ten law, but to the propitiatory or atonement, for pardon 
for our breach of it ; for justification by a righteousness 
which meets all its demands. 

In the next place, saith the apostle, there was in this 
box. and beneath this lid, a golden vessel containing man- 
na. The meaning of this is explained by the Saviour 
when he says, " Your fathers did eat manna in the desert, 
and were satisfied." Its derivation is strange. When 
that little frost-like substance fell from the skies on the 
desert, which the Jews had to collect in baskets, and which 
was their miraculous bread, for there was nothing else to 



THE SHECHINAH. 



287 



live on ; on their first sight of it, the Jews were so aston- 
ished at this strange bread, so unlike good wheat, that 
they exclaimed, Manhu, which in Hebrew signifies, " What 
is it?" and from that question, " What is it?" it came 
to be called manna ; the manna in the desert. A portion 
of this manna, this "What is it?" was stored up in a 
golden vessel and placed under the lid in the ark, and 
beneath the mercy seat, to be a symbol of that bread that 
cometh down from heaven. If you will read the 6th 
chapter of the Gospel of St. John at your leisure you 
will there find the contrast : w Your fathers did eat manna 
in the wilderness, and are dead. I am the bread of life ; 
he that cometh to me shall never hunger ; and he that be- 
lieveth on me shall never thirst. ' • Now that bread is Christ, 
or the word that describes him. ' ' Man doth not live by bread 
alone ; " what an exquisitely suggestive thought is that ! 
bread is taken for earth's choicest and best thing ; but 
there is in man a hunger, in his heart a want, in his nature 
a craving for satisfaction, which not all the dignity, and 
riches, and glory of the world can ever satisfy or fill ; he 
must live by living bread, and that bread is the word of 
Christ. The word of man is scepticism ; the word of the 
priest is superstition ; the word of Christ is the highest 
reason, the greatest truth, the truest nutriment. 

Inside this ark, and under the lid of the mercy seat, 
was Aaron's rod that budded. What was Aaron's rod ? A 
dry, withered, sapless stick, that by Divine power, and for 
a purpose worthy of God's interposition, burst into blos- 
som ; and in that ark (and this is not a piece of tradition, 
because every Jew could have contradicted it at the time 
if it had been a lie) — in that ark this sapless stick put 
forth living buds or blossoms. What was meant by that ? 



288 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



It was God teaching his infant church that not only in 
Christ is the law first hushed, not only in Christ is there 
living bread for man's soul, but also in Christ there is a 
life that shall burst into blossoms that shall never fade ; 
there is the sap, the vitality, the vigor, that will endure 
for ever and for ever. 

Then over this mercy seat and over the lid, the golden 
lid, containing the law, and the pot of manna, and Aaron's 
rod that budded, there were two figures shaped like men. 
And this is Divine evidence that the angels, as far as they 
are visible, have always been visible in some human shape, 
and that the common, supposed to be schoolboy or childish 
notion of angels having wings is not so absurd after all 
as we are prone to imagine ; at all events this is plain, 
that these two angels or cherubim stood one at one end of 
the mercy seat and the other at the other end, with their 
wings stretched out to be a sort of screen over it the tip of one 
wiflfg touching the tip of the other wing, and the two faces 
of the two angels looking down upon the bright glory that 
burnt beneath, and that glory throwing its unearthly 
splendor into their faces, and far and wide throughout the 
house. This also had its significance and its value. The 
first time we read of these angels, or cherubim and sera- 
phim, names which are distinctions of office, is when Adam 
and Eve were expelled from Paradise ; we read that the 
cherubim with flaming swords were placed there to guard 
the entrance to the tree of life. I believe these cherubim 
were the commencement of the mercy seat ; that the mer- 
cy seat was placed at the gates of Paradise ; and while it 
sounds to us like the flaming sword to strike down the 
criminal who should approach, it was rather mercy and 
loving-kindness shining there to give heart and hope to the 



THE SHECHINAH. 



239 



weary exiles as they heard the tramp of their retreating 
footsteps from that beautiful spot they had forfeited and 
lost by sin. Peter explains what it is — and this is the 
perfect explanation of it — after sneaking of the Gospel, 
and speakingof its truths, its love, its light, its peace, he sa^s, 
in 1 Peter i. 12 : c< Which things the angels desire to 
look into." And we have therefore the key to this expla- 
nation. The cherubim over the mercy seat were designed 
to show us that angels, who have nothing at stake in our 
economy, are intensely interested in it. The Greek words, 
translated " the angels desire to look into," literally trans- 
lated are, " with outstreched necks ; " as it were stretching 
their necks to the very utmost, they desire to comprehend 
the marvels, and the mysteries, and the glorious things 
that are the product of a Saviour's cross and the hopes of 
the hearts of all them that believe in him. 

Having thus described what it was, let me state in the 
next place that when the tabernacle was moved it was also 
moved with it, as well as the glory that settled on it. The 
pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night stood 
over it ; and that was the signal for the host of Isarel to 
rest or follow through the desert. The ark on these oc- 
casions was carried by the priests; as it advanced the 
people advanced ; when it stood still they stood still ; they 
followed its leadings, and its leadings alone ; and where- 
ever it was there the church in the desert was. The ark 
amid Israel was the Christian church in its infancy ; 
Christ amid his people is the Christian church in its pres- 
ent condition ; and Christ visibly present in the midst of 
his people, visibly glorified, in the world that will be, will 
constitute the church in its perfection and its final glory. 

When this ark was thus- carried we read of its effects. 
13 



290 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



Before it and at its approach the Jordan was cleft in twain. 
The instant that the feet of the priests that carried the 
ark touched the flood of Jordan, its waters stood up as an 
heap on the one side, and there was no water on the other 
side, and they marched through dry-shod. The miracle 
was obvious. We have to accompany us through the 
swellings of Jordan not this ark, for it has perished for 
ever. If ever relic deserved to be kept it was this ark ; 
and yet if it had been kept we should have fallen down 
and worshipped it instead of Him who is its end, its sig- 
nificance, and its glory. When the day comes that we 
shall have to pass the swellings of Jordan, if we are left to 
ourselves its deep flood will carry us away, and leave us 
where the Jordan leaves its waters, in the Dead Sea, that 
has neither life nor hope. But if we approach that last 
Jordan not with this ark, but shall I say singing ? — no, 
but feeling, that Psalm, the divinest poem that was ever 
written: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the 
shadow of death I will fear no evil, for the ark is with me, 
thou art with me ; thy rod and thy staff, they guide me;" 
as we approach the dark valley of the shadow of death, 
this glory, this shechinah, will light it up with a splendoi 
of which you have no idea ; this presence, which is pow- 
er, will cleave its deep flood in twain ; and the Christiai) 
shall find that there is no death to him that dies in the 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

We read also that this sacred ark wherever it settled 
blessed the house and the home of him who entertained it. 
It was entertained by Obed-edom, and its presence blessed 
his house. And to show you that it had a significance far 
diviner than strikes the eye, we read in every instance 
that the hearts of all Israel clung to this ark ; if it disap- 



THE SHECHItfAH. 



201 



peared tbeir hopes perished ; if it was in the midst of 
them and the glory on it their hearts were quickened. I 
think the most touching proof of this is recorded in 
1 Samuel iv., where we read of a battle between the Phi- 
listines and the children of Israel : " And the Philistines 
fought, and Israel was smitten, and they fled every man 
into his tent; and there was a very great slaughter; for 
there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen. And the ark 
of God was taken ; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and 
Phinehas, were slain. And there ran a man of Benjamin 
out of the army, and came to Shiloh the same day with his 
clothes rent, and with earth upon his head. And when 
he came, lo, Eli sat upon a seat by the wayside watching " 
— now mark what he is watching for — "for his heart 
trembled for the ark of God. And when the man came 
into the city, and told it, all the city cried out. And 
when Eli heard the noise of the crying, he said, What 
meaneth the noise of this tumult ? And the man came 
in hastily, and told Eli. Now Eli was ninety and eight 
years old ; and his eyes were dim, that he could not see. 
And the man said unto Eli. I am he that came out of the 
army, and I fled to-day out of the ai my. And he said, 
What is there done, my son ? And the messenger answered 
and said, Israel is fled before the Philistines; " now Eli 
was a patriot, and loved his country, but he said nothing 
at all. And he continued : " And there hath been also a 
great slaughter among the people : " Eli was a man, and 
he felt for the sufferings of mankind, but he was silent at 
that. And he added : " And thy two sons also, Hophni 
and Phinehas, are dead; " Eli was a parent, and he must 
have felt that deeply, but he said nothing. And then he 
added : " And the ark of God is taken." And then what 



292 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



is said ? u And it came to pass, when he made mention of 
the ark of God, that he fell from off the seat backward by 
the side of the gate and his neck brake, and he died ; for 
he was an old man, and heavy. And he had judged Israel 
forty years." Here you have the patriot, the man, the 
father, bearing each stroke with heroic fortitude ; but 
when the Christian's hope was smitten he fell from his 
seat and died. But as if that were not enough, there is a 
still more touching episode immediately afterwards. ' ' And 
his daughter-in-law, Phinehas' wife, was with child, near to 
be delivered ; and when she heard the tidings " — a Chris- 
tian woman, a patriotic woman, a pious woman — " when 
she heard the tidings that the ark of God was taken, and 
that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she 
bowed herself and travailed ; for her pains came upon her. 
And about the time of her death the woman that stood by 
her said unto her, Fear not, for" — what to a Jewish 
mother's heart was the greatest source of joy that could 
possibly be communicated to it, for every mother in Israel 
hoped to be the Virgin Mary, the mother of the Saviour 
according to the flesh ; and when they said to her, com- 
forting her 11 Fear not ; for thou hast born a son," it is 
added, in words the very simplicity and silence of which 
are full of pathos, " But she answered not, neither did she 
regard it." Then what must have been upon her heart 
that a mother's joy was not felt, that a mothers greatest 
hope communicated to her no happiness ; what was the 
cause of it ? The answer is given in the next verse : " she 
named the child Ichabod," literally translated, " the glory 
is departed from Israel ; because the ark of God was taken, 
and because of her father-in-law and her husband. ' ' Now 
here we have in these two instances the most touching and 



THE SHECHINAH. 



293 



expressive picture of the affection that an Israelite had to- 
wards the ark of God, and towards that which was the to- 
ken of his glory. 

Then we are told the tabernacle of God shall be with 
men ; not Aaron's rod, nor the manna, nor the golden lid. 
nor the cherubim of beaten gold ; but that which all these 
were meant to signify — Christ, his people, the earth re- 
stored, all things made new, descending a vision from the 
skies, all beauty, all splendor, all blessedness ; the mine 
yielding its most precious stones, heaven its brightest glory, 
man's heart its deepest worship ; and the tabernacle of 
God shall then be actualized, no longer in the transitory 
shape of a tabernacle, no longer in the perishing shape 
of Solomon's temple : "I saw no temple therein, for the 
Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it ; 
and there shall be no night there ; and there shall be no 
need of the sun nor of the moon ; for the shechinah, the 
glory between the cherubim, doth lighten it, and God is 
the light thereof." 



294 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



LECTURE XVIII. 

THE MANIFESTATION OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD. 

The sons of God are his now. But their life is hid with 
Christ in God. In the world to come they will be reveal- 
ed in his glory and seen to be his. 

" They shall be his people ; and God himself shall be with them, and be 
their God.*' — Revelation xxi. 3. 

They shall be his people ; and that God himself, not his 
substitute, shall be with them ; not we with him in this far 
distant land, but he with us in our own reconsecrated and 
renovated earth. " God shall be with them, and he shall 
be their God." We have the root of this grand relation- 
ship in the beautiful words: •"All things are yours; 
Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas ; or life or death ; things 
present or things to come ; all are yours ; " by a tenure 
indissoluble — "for ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." 

Are we not now the people of God ? Unquestionably 
we are. We are as much justified to-day, if justified at 
all, as we shall be in eternity. We are as safe to-day, if 
we be Christians, as when we have passed the bourne from 
whence no traveller returns. Our safety is contingent 



THE MANIFESTATION OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD. 295 

upon God, not on the intensity of our faith, the tempera- 
ture of our love, or the persistence of our course. What 
then is meant by the prediction that at that day we shall 
be his' people ? We shall at that day be seen to be so. 
We are told in Scripture, " Now are we the sons of God ; " 
that is a fact ; 11 but it doth not yet appear what we shall 
be ; but we know that when he shall appear we shall be 
like him, and we shall see him as he is." Again : " The 
world knoweth us not ; our life is hid with Christ in God." 
There is many a true Christian at present misapprehended 
by the world, and in some instances denounced by it ; and 
there are some who are mere pretentious Christians, ap- 
plauded by the world for their Christianity, who are 
strangers to its power altogether. God's children now are 
like precious stones buried in the earth ; just as precious 
at this moment as when noble eyes prize them and kingly 
persons wear them ; but they are hidden, they are cover- 
ed, and partially concealed in the earth, and amid the 
debris of the fall. But when at that day they are ex- 
tracted from the earth, and polished and set, they will not 
only be seen but shine. Christians now are like precious 
stones, hidden ; as precious in their obscurity as they will 
be in their promised splendor, but invisible to us in their 
loveliest traits and in their noblest capabilities. At that 
day, we are told, the sons of God shall be made manifest ; 
they shall be seen as they are ; he will present to himself 
the church, a glorious church, without spot, or blemish, or 
wrinkle, or any such thing. All those imperfections that 
conceal Christianity now shall be withdrawn. There is 
many a Christian in an underground cellar, but nobody 
knows that there is a Christian there, and very few that 
there is a human being there. There is many a Christian 



296 



THE 0REAT CONSUMMATION. 



concealed by his own prejudices and constitutional peculi- 
arities ; for it is not true that when a man becomes a 
Christian all his physical and intellectual idiosyncracies 
and defects are dissipated : they are modified, but not an- 
nihilated. If we read those characters that are set forth 
in the New Testament we shall recognize this. Peter's 
peculiarities crop up to the very end of his life ; softened, 
toned down, by the influence of grace, but manifest still. 
Wherever you find a Christian you find the old traces : as 
in the condition of a plant that has been taken from a 
certain habitat, the soil adheres to its roots, and were it 
washed away wholly, probably the plant would die. In 
the world as it now is perfection is in promise, and imper- 
fection is the actual experience. Earth clings to us ; our 
fall is traceable ; alloy is mixed with the purest gold. 
Only in the world as it will be, when grace is lost in glory, 
and faith is merged in full fruition, and hope shall be dis- 
solved in having, will all the remains of earth be left be- 
hind, and the precious stones that God has selected for the 
diadem of Christ the Saviour reflect his beauty in per- 
fection, without flaw or defect, perfect even as Christ him- 
self is perfect. At that day we shall be manifested as his 
people. 

In these words we have the substance of what has been 
called by divines the covenant of God : "At that day I 
will be their God, and they shall be my people ; " or, as 
it is expressed more fully in Hebrews viii. 10 : " This is 
the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel 
after those days, saith the Lord : I will put my laws into 
their mind, and write them in their hearts ; and I will be 
to them a God, and they shall be to me a people ; and they 
shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his 



THE MANIFESTATION OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD. 297 

brother, saying, Know the Lord ; for all shall know me, 
from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to 
their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities 
will I remember no more." The same covenant is ex- 
pressed in the Apocalypse, and only more fully unfolded 
in its details in the Epistle to the Hebrews. All in this 
covenant now and then is promise ; nothing is exaction. 
The old law was, " Thou shalt do this, and thou shalt not 
do that ; " the new law of Christianity is, I will give you 
life, and grace, and power ; and leave you to express the 
instincts of your heart in whatsoever things are just, and 
beautiful, and lovely, and of good report. We have the 
old law in the Decalogue ; we have the new law in the 
5th chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew ; 
where each part opens with a benediction, passes into a 
duty, and then flowers into a fragrant and a beautiful prom- 
ise. In the old law it would have been, " Thou shalt be 
meek ; thou shalt be pure in heart; " but in the new law 
it begins with a benediction — " Blessed ; " then it speci- 
fies a character — "the meek; " and then it appends the 
promised reward — "for they shall inherit the earth." 
Thus in the new economy duty is not presented in its cold, 
hard, naked, repulsive aspect ; but it is set, lest you should 
shrink from it between a benediction and a promise ; a 
benediction introducing it, a promise crowning it : " Bless- 
ed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed 
are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." The Ten 
Commandments are the words of a sovereign Lord com- 
manding ; the Beatitudes on the Mount are the words of 
a loving Father encouraging and cheering. Now, this is 
just the spirit of Christianity; it is not b religion exact- 
ing all, and giving nothing ; but it is a religion giving all, 
13* 



298 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



and leaving the gift to be the inspiration of the obedient 
life. In the old covenant to believe was a command, to do 
was a command, to love was a command ; under the new 
covenant, and in the Christian economy, God loves you, 
and leaves that love manifested to you to work out its re- 
sult, and to reproduce itself in love to him. God gives 
you, and leaves that gift in your heart like a living seed 
to grow up and to issue in the fruits of whatsoever things 
are lovely, and generous, and just, and bountiful. The 
whole system of the Gospel is God giving all, without a 
condition ; and leaving the gift by its action to produce 
the fruits that the law demands, but that the Christian 
under the influence of love is sure to bring forth. And 
hence the pulpit in the present day is not a place for shower- 
ing down hard, fiery rescripts, " Thou shait ; " It is nei- 
ther Sinai with its thunders, nor Ebal with its curses, nor 
Gerizim with its blessings : but the Mount of Beatitudes, 
on which the Saviour stands, and gives you as a free gift, 
without condition, without pledge, without exaction, all 
the happiness that the heart is capable of in the world that 
now is, all the happiness that the heart can hold in the 
world that will be. How much owest thou unto me ? Go 
forth and do as the gifts you have received prescribe, and 
show to the world that love is a motive force ten times might- 
ier than law ; and that never is God so obeyed, so served, and 
his people so helped, as when the inspiring motive is not 
law — "Thou shalt;" but love — Go and show how 
much thou owest to thy Lord. Such is the contrast be- 
tween the two covenants. 

The first feature in this covenant which God proclaims 
in the 21st chapter of the Apocalypse is, "I will put my 
laws into their mind." Of old the law was written upon 



THE MANIFESTATION OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD. 299 

stone, and, like the material on which it was written, 
cold ; now the law is sculptured by the finger of love 
upon the regenerated and loving heart. Then it was the 
law outside and external, and a voice from the Mount ; 
now the law has become a seed quickening in the heart, a 
life begun within before it shows itself in living without 
— a central transformation in the depths of the soul, 
sending forth its influence from the centre to the circum- 
ference, adorning, beautifying and elevating the whole 
temperature of the soul of man. Man's plan of making 
people better is by giving them something that they have 
not ; God's plan of making people better is by making 
them something that they are not. Man gives to the 
imperfect creature something that creature has not ; God 
makes the imperfect creature something which that crea- 
ture is not. The one writes the law upon the outer man ; 
the other writes the law upon the inward heart. Thus 
love in the heart becomes law in the life ; and the light 
kindled within so shines that men seeing your good works 
glorify your Father which is in heaven. 

The second feature in this covenant — u I will write 
my laws in their hearts" — "proves it is a Divine work. 
What is a Christian ? Not the creation of baptism, not 
the product of diplomacy, but a Divine creation. " I 
will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their 
hearts." In other words, what we all need is not the 
patching up of our imperfect nature, but the regeneration 
of it. The great law is not, Except a man get rid of 
this vice and get rid of that, and put on this habit and 
put on that, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven : but, 
" Except a man be born again of the Spirit of God he 
cannot see the kingdom of heaven." Hence, wha^ makes 



soo 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



a Christian is not something done to the outer man, but 
something wrought in the inner heart ; and what we all 
need in order to make us what we should be is not the 
reparation of this or the correction of that, but the in- 
spiration of grace, the quickening presence and power of 
the Holy Spirit of God ; so that under the action and the 
instinct of a new and a nobler life we shall enter upon 
every right way, and be found busy in every good work, 
and taste the happiness and anticipate the joy of that 
kingdom that has no bounds, and that bliss which knows 
no interruption and no end. Are these laws within you ? 
Do you say — I do this, not because I find it written in 
the outer book, " Thou shalt do it," but because it has 
become an instinct living and impulsive in my heart? 
Do you say — I do this, not because I am afraid of God's 
curse, but because his love constrains me ? A Christian 
is not so much a man with certain corrected habits, or 
much amended manners, and considerably improved 
morals — all of which are good in their place — but he 
is a man acting under a new impulse, feeling the force of 
divine instincts ; doing things not because conscience 
scourges him if he does not, but because God loved him, 
and he loves God, and delights in translating into life the 
love wherewith God has loved him. A single mite put 
into the treasury as the expression of your love to Christ 
rings more musical in the ears of heaven than a thousand 
pounds cast in to get the world's Sclat. or to be a penance 
or a propitiation for your dishonesty in the past, or out 
of some other analagous, low, mean, and mercenary 
motive. Let me ask you thus to test yourselves. What 
is your dominating force ? What is it that restrains, 
and constrains, and inspires, and guides ? I do not ask 



THE MANIFESTATION OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD. 301 

what you forbear to do, or what you are impelled to do ; 
I do not ask, have you extracted from your nature this 
vice, or have you lopped off that withered, and broken, 
and diseased branch? but do you feel within you, con- 
straining you to new acts, to new sacrifices, to new sym- 
pathies, to new deeds, to a new course, love to him that 
loves you ; a love that does not falter in the worst nor 
weary in the best of times; a love that, like a strong 
and an inexhaustible mainspring, impels you to do what- 
soever things are pure, and just, and lovely, and honest, 
and of good report ; and while you do so makes you feel 
not as if you had done something that gives a claim upon 
God, but how little you have clone when you have done 
the noblest and the most beneficent things in comparison 
of what you owe out of gratitude to him who snatched 
you as a brand from the burning, and has made you a 
tree of righteousness in the Paradise of our God ? "I 
will put my laws into their mind," and " I will write 
them ; " that is to say, they shall not be mere transient 
impulses or soon forgotten, but " I will write them upon 
the living tablets of the heart. Just as I wrote the 
Decalogue of old upon the granite, so will I fix my laws 
in their hearts." Hence a Christian does not only go to 
his Bible for direction ; he looks within also. The re- 
script in the Bible without is reproduced on the sensitive 
and susceptible tablet of the heart within ; and by an 
instinct that never fails him, he knows what is duty, 
sacrifice, allegiance, loyalty, obedience, service. I will 
put my laws into their mind, and I will write them " they 
shall never be eifaced. The storms of trouble, the perse- 
cutions of the world, the waters of affliction, may wash 
and make them clearer, but they shall never efface those 



302 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION, 



living inscriptions, more imperishable than written with 
the diamond on the rock ; the inscription within of that 
which God has written without; and jet more, the 
instinct that is lodged within that ever whispers and 
rarely fails : " This is the way, walk ye in it." Such 
then is the change that God will make, and that happy 
day will show in the creature he has accepted and made 
his. 

He says also : "I will be to them a God ; " or, as it 
is in another passage, " I will be their God." What is 
implied in this promise : " I will be their God? " If a 
man comes to you and says to you : In trouble I will be 
your friend; what do you understand by that? That 
everything that his resources can supply will be placed at 
your service. If a physician comes to you and says : I 
will be your physician when you are ill ; what does he 
mean ? That everything that the physician possesses of 
skill, of talent, of experience, will be placed at your 
service. And when God comes to a poor sinful worm of 
the dust and says : "I will be your God ; " what does He 
mean ? All that omniscience knows in the boundless uni- 
verse ; all that omnipotence can achieve ; all that love can 
prescribe ; all that Deity infinite, eternal, unsearchable, 
can supply, shall be at your service, and for youi happi- 
ness and comfort for ever and ever. What a glorious 
truth is this then : "I will be their God ! " When I say 
so I do not mean it as a pretty figure or a fanciful, 
thought; it is a precious, earnest, personal, available 
reality. It is offered to every individual who reads it 
God says : "If you will only let me, I will be your God ; 
I will pardon all your sins, I will heal all your diseases : 
I will renew your youth like the eagle's ; I will satisfy 



THE MANIFESTATION OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD. 803 

your mouth with good things; I will crown you with 
loving-kindnesses and with tender mercies." Take all 
the promises that sparkle in the firmament of Scripture 
like stars in the sky, and when you have read them all, 
and weighed them all, and appreciated the riches, and the 
glory, and the resources of all, just say this : That is 
what God says he will give to me, and do to me and for 
me, when he says : 1 will be your God." If God is not 
yours, remember it is not that God is unwilling, but that 
you will not have him. 

Then God says also : H And they shall be to me a 
people." " Ye," says the apostle in Corinthians, " are 
Christ's and Christ is God's." But how does he make 
us his people ? First he buys us. The moment we 
sinned we sold ourselves to the devil. The serf of Russia 
is released by death ; the slave in South America may 
purchase his freedom ; but the serf and the slave of the 
Wicked One remains in bondage by links that no human 
power can dissolve, until God himself takes the matter in 
hand, snaps the links, and lets the slave become the free- 
man whom the truth of Christ makes free. He will be to 
you a God, and he will make you his people. Power 
may make slaves ; superstition may make fanaties ; the 
sword may force allegiance ; but God's loving us alone 
can create responsive love to him. He first of all shows 
himself to us as our God, and then he reveals the re- 
sponse in that we become his people. And what are the 
marks of his people ? There is one grand mark, which 
embraces all — they love him. What is the law ? — what 
are the Ten Commandments ? They are love. What is 
love ? The Decalogue in a monosyllable. What is all 
heaven ? It is love. What is hell ? It is hate, or sin. 



3J4 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



And the way which God pursues to make us love him is 
to manifest himself to us in brilliant and beautiful apoca- 
lypse as our God, and then to ask us : Are you willing to 
accept my offer, and to become my children ? " And to 
as many,'' he tells us, "as received him, to them gave 
he power to become the sons of God.'' 

Another part of this beautiful covenant promise is, as 
explained by the apostle in the Epistle to the Hebrews : 
" They shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every 
man his brother, saying, Know the Lord ; for all shall 
know me, from the least to the greatest." That day is 
not yet come. We are told in the Epistle to the Ephesians 
that God has given teachers, evangelists, pastors, till " Ave 
all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge 
of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure 
of the stature of the fulness of Christ.'' That day is not 
yet come ; and therefore there are now teachers in our 
schools, teachers in our families, teachers in our churches, 
teachers everywhere. It is the era of ignorance, of im- 
perfection and of sin. But a day comes when all Chris- 
tendom shall be the school of Christ ; when the Great 
Teacher himself shall supersede the underteachers that are 
for a day ; when they shall no more one man teach anoth- 
er, saying, This is the knowledge of God ; but they shall 
all be taught directly from the fountain head ; and in the 
beautiful language of the psalmist, as well as of the apos- 
tle, they shall all know him, from the least even to the 
greatest. That time comes nearer every hour ; some think 
it is very near ; all of us believe its advent is absolutely 
certain. This present imperfect economy of lights and 
shadows, of sunshine and clouds, of griefs and gladness, of 
ignorance and error, must end ; and that grand and glorious 



THE MANIFESTATION OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD. 305 



day break upon the shores of time when all shadows shall 
flee away, when all imperfection shall be lost in perfect 
sunshine, and we shall no more ask the people their pastor, 
or even the Christian his Bible, what is God's will, but 
his will shall be instinct, his law shall be inner love ; and 
we shall need no outer revelation, but shall each have a 
revelation in his heart, the teaching and the inspiration 
of the Holy Spirit of God. It is here where certain wri- 
ters of the present day have gone wrong. They say that 
an outer revelation is needless ; that an inner light is 
sufficient. That will one day be truth ; but at present it 
is a huge error. If the day were come when " they shall 
no more teach every man his brother, saying, Know the 
Lord ; but all shall know him from the least to the great- 
est," that sentiment of one of the writers of the Essays 
and Reviews would be absolute truth. But unhappily he 
has anticipated the mille nium ; he has dreamed some 
night that the millennium is come, and he has risen in the 
morning and written in his Essay that we need no more to 
teach every man his neighbor, saying, Know the Lord : for 
everybody shall now know him, from the least to the 
greatest. By this time he must have discovered that he is 
in error ; for on all sides thousands know not the Lord ; 
and on all sides, in spite of multiplied teachers, teachers 
of every gift, and grace, and manner, and resource, there 
are thousands in every neighborhood and parish who know 
little of the Saviour, less of salvation, and nothing of the 
hopes of glory. 

Then he adds-: " I will be merciful to their unright- 
eousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remem- 
ber no more." What a blessed thought is that ! The 
last breath that we draw, alas ! will be laden with sin. 



COG 



THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. 



The very last beat of the heart before we enter into glory 
will have imperfection in it. But it is a gracious and a 
glorious promise that God is the sin-forgiving God ; at 
every hour, and every minute, and every second in life's 
long day his words are not, I have forgiven, and will for- 
give no more ; but, " I. even I am he that blotteth out 
thine iniquities for mine own name's sake ; " and again : 
4i The Lord, the Lord God merciful and gracious, forgiving 
iniquity, transgression and sin." And hence the Christian 
need never fear that the imperfection of the hour that 
passes will not be forgiven. God forgives ever as we in 
our weakness and our worthlessness come short of what 
He requires ; and every hour of our life we can fall back 
upon him as a sin-forgiving God : " And their iniquities 
will I remember no more." And the whole earth, we are 
told, shall be filled with his glory. 

Such is the world as it will be. Do you not sometimes 
long for that day ? I do not mean, do you long for death ? 
Nobody loves death ; we have an instinctive recoil from 
death. Why ? Because death is the shadow of the curse ; 
and if it be only its shadow, still it is its shadow, and be- 
longs to the curse. But then we must long for that day, 
whether we shall enter it through the valley of the shad- 
ow of death, or whether we shall be in that happy group 
that shall never see death ; for it is a fact that we should 
not lose sight of that one day there will be a whole race 
of Christian men that will never die. It is not true, as 
people sometimes quote the text, " It is appointed unto all 
men to die ; " it is not, "it is appointed unto men to 
die; " but all men will not die. A day comes, perhaps 
the young may enter on it, when the heart, instead of 
standing still and staggering on the weary march of life, 



THE SHECHINAH. 



307 



shall begin to beat with a nobler pulse ; and this mortal in 
the twinkling of an eye shall put on immortality, and this 
corruptible shall put on incorruptibility. " We shall not 
all die," says the apostle, "but we shall be changed." 
But if we should be called upon to pass through the val- 
ley of the shadow of death ; or whether we shall be called 
upon, or rather summoned without dying to enter on the 
rest that remains for the people of God, how must we long 
for that day when all imperfection, obscurity, misinter- 
pretation, misconception, shall all be lost, forgotten, cast 
off for ever ; and you and I shall appear in light in which 
there is no shadow, and shall know each other even as God 
himself knows us ! And all who have met together with- 
in the house of God, and those who have left seats in the 
sanctuary below, and taken possession of thrones in the 
sanctuary above ; and them you have committed dust to 
dust and ashes to ashes ; what a glorious meeting will that 
be when we shall talk together, and you shall tell me, oh 
how cold you were in preaching that love ! how poor 
were your exhibitions of the greatness, of the goodness of 
that blessed Saviour ! how unworthy were your sermons 
of all that we now learn of him ! and how cold were our 
hearts, and how poor and few were our services ! and yet, 
whilst we admit all this, through your sermons we learnt 
the way that has conducted us to the land ; and whilst we 
thank you as the servant for the service you have done, 
we give the glory, and the honor, and the praise to Him 
who has manifested himself as our God, and has made us 
in his infinite grace to be his people on a new earth and a 
nobler world. 



DR. CUMMING'S NEW WORKS. 



THE GREAT TRIBULATION; 

OR, 

Things Coming on the Earth. 

Br Rev. John Cumming, D.D. Minister of the Scottish 
National Church, Crown Court, Covent Garden, 
London. Author of " Apocalyptic Sketches," 
etc., etc., etc. 

In two Series, 12mo. muslin bound. Either Series sold 
separately. Priee $1.00 each. 



THE GREAT PREPARATION; 

OR, 

Redemption Draweth Nigh. 

By Rev. John Cumming, D.D. Author of "The Great 

Tribulation," &c. 

In two Series, 12mo. muslin bound. Either Series sold 
separately. Price $1.00 each. 



*** These remarkable Volumes of Sermons, by the Rev. Dr. Cumming, of 
London, have created a most extraordinary interest throughout the reading 
religious community. They are marked, in the opinion of theological critics, 
among the most important of recent contributions to the literature of the 
Prophecies. Their sale has been enormous. 



Copies of either will be sent by mail, postage free, on receipt of 
price, by 

CARLETON, Publisher, 

New York. 




NEW BOOKS 
And New Editions Recently Issued by 
CARLETON, PUBLISHER, 

(Late RTJDD & CARLETON,) 
413 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 



N.B.— The Publisher, upon receipt of the price in advance, will send any 
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BY CARLETON, NEW YORK. 



5 



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The Morgesons. 
A clever novel of American Life, by Mrs. R. H. Stoddard, $ 1 .00. 

Beatrice Cenei. 
An historical novel by F. D. Guerrazzi, from the Italian, $1.50. 

Isabella Orsini. 

An historical novel by the author of "Beatrice Cenci," $1.25. 

A Popular Treatise on Deafness. 

For individuals and families, by E. B. Lighthill, M.D., $1.00. 

Oriental Harems and Scenery. 

A gossipy work, translated from the French of Belgiojoso, $1.25. 
Lola Montez. 

Jrler lectures and autobiography, with a steel portrait, $1.25. 

John Doe and Bichard Roe. 
A novel of New York city life, by Edward S. Gould, $1.00. 

Doesticks' Letters. 
The original letters of this great humorist, illustrated, $1.50. 

PI u-ri-b us- tali . 
A comic history of America, by " Doesticks,'* illus., $1.50. 

The Elephant Club. 
A humorous description of club-life, by "Doesticks," $1.50. 

Vernon Grove. 
A novel by Mrs. Caroline H. Glover, Charleston, S. C, $1.00. 

The Book of Chess Literature. 
A complete Encyclopaedia of this subject, by D. W. Fiske,$i.50. 




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